Protesting doctors from RG Kar Medical College and Hospital met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at her Kalighat residence in Kolkata. Ahead of the meeting, a junior doctor said the doctors were going to meet the chief minister. "Two stenographers from our side will be there."
The agitating doctors had been pressing for live streaming of the meeting, but the government turned down their request citing hearings in the Supreme Court. The state, however, agreed to their demands of recording and signing the minutes of the talks.
Escorted by a pilot police vehicle, around 30 medics arrived at Mamata Banerjee's residence at 6.20 pm. The meeting was originally scheduled at 5 pm. Before departing from their sit-in spot outside Swasthya Bhavan, the protesters said they were being accompanied by two professional stenographers to record the minutes of the meeting.
The protesters said they would not settle for anything less than the five demands they had previously placed before the government. The doctors demanded accountability and punishment for those responsible for the rape-murder of a postgraduate trainee in RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9 and "destruction" of evidence; strict action against the former medical college principal Sandip Ghosh; resignation of Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal and Health Secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam; improved security for healthcare workers; and the eradication of the "threat culture" in government healthcare institutions.
Earlier in the evening, the doctors said the arrest of the Tala police station OC by the CBI increases the significance of the transparency of the meeting even more than before. "We would like to emphasise that the meeting be videographed by separate videographers of both parties. If not possible from your side, entire video file of the meeting be handed over to the doctor representatives. If that is not possible, then the minutes of the full transcript of the meeting be recorded and formulated by both the parties and duly signed by all the attendees and handed over at the end of the meeting," the agitating doctors said.
The West Bengal government today for the fifth and final time invited the protesting junior doctors for talks to end the RG Kar impasse, two days after the dialogue failed to take off over disagreement on live-streaming of the meeting.