Trinamool Congress MP Jawhar Sircar wrote to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday, expressing his desire to resign his MP post over the state government’s lacklustre handling of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
The retired IAS officer said he has decided to resign his Rajya Sabha MP post and leave politics. “I have suffered patiently for a month since the terrible incident at RG Kar Hospital, and was hoping for your direct intervention with the agitating junior doctors, in the old style of Mamata Banerjee. It has not happened and whatever punitive steps that government is taking now are too little and quite late.”
Sircar said the current outpour of anger against the West Bengal government cannot be dismissed just as political and said “the movement is as much for Abhaya as it is against the state government and the party”. Sircar added the current protests calls for immediate course correction else communal forces will capture the state.
Sircar also blamed Mamata Banerjee for inaction against corrupt officials and ministers and added it also led to current public outrage against the Trinamool Congress government. "I think normalcy may have been restored in this state much earlier, if the caucus of the corrupt doctors was smashed and those guilty of taking improper administrative actions punished immediately after the scandalous incident happened," he added.
A postgraduate trainee woman doctor was allegedly raped and murdered in the seminar hall of the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9, following which Sanjay Roy, a Kolkata Police civic volunteer was arrested. The gruesome crime resulted in nationwide protests by doctors and citizens.
The case, initially probed by Kolkata police was transferred to the CBI after the High Court found lapses in the latter’s probe. The Supreme Court also took suo motu cognisance of the case and formed a National Task Force to formulate an action plan for the safety of doctors.
