Trinamool MP quits editorial post of party mouthpiece, wishes PM Modi on birthday

The veteran TMC leader had been summoned to the headquarters of Kolkata Police last month after he had criticised on X the way the cops dealt with the rape and murder of a doctor of the R G Kar Hospital.

Kolkata: Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, a Trinamool Congress member in the Rajya Sabha, has resigned as the editor of the party’s mouthpiece Jago Bangla, after repeatedly embarrassing the party by striking discordant notes over the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor at a hospital in Kolkata.

Ray also took to X to wish Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday, noting that it coincided with Bhadra Sankranti and Vishwakarma Puja.

“Warmest birthday greetings to Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modiji. Incidentally, today is Bhadra Sankranti as per the Bengali calendar and Vishwakarma Puja is also being celebrated,” the TMC MP, who was a few months back removed as the chief whip of the party in the Rajya Sabha, wrote on X, tagging the prime minister.

Ray stepped down as the editor of Jago Bangla just days after another Rajya Sabha member of the party, Jawhar Sircar, quit as a parliamentarian criticising the way the party supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government dealt with the outrage over the rape and murder of the young medic at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.

The TMC on Tuesday appointed Sovandev Chattopadhyay, a minister in the state government, as the new editor of the party’s mouthpiece.

Ray, according to the sources, formally resigned as the editor of ‘Jago Bangla’ on Monday, hours before the TMC supremo and the state’s chief minister had a meeting with the junior doctors, who had been protesting against the rape and murder of one of their colleagues at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.

Banerjee accepted the demand of the protesting doctors to change the commissioner of Kolkata Police and a few other officers of the Department of Health and Family Welfare of the state government.

The protesting doctors have been demanding the removal of Vineet Goyal from the office of the commissioner of Kolkata Police for his alleged failure to prevent cover-up attempts and destruction of evidence after the body of the young doctor was found.

“Satyameva Jayate. I’m happy like everybody,” Ray wrote on X after the demands of the junior doctors were accepted by the state government.

He had earlier suggested on X that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), now entrusted with the responsibility of probing the rape and murder of the doctor, should arrest Goyal and interrogate him.

The veteran TMC leader had been summoned to the headquarters of Kolkata Police last month after he had criticised on X the way the cops dealt with the rape and murder of a doctor at a hospital and suggested that the CBI should arrest the city police commissioner. He had also joined the August 14-15 midnight protest seeking justice for the young doctor.