In a major development, Trinamool Congress leader Jawhar Sircar has resigned from his post as a member of Parliament (MP) in Rajya Sabha, in protest against the handling of the RG Kar incident by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government and corruption issues within his party. In a letter to the party leadership, the TMC leader mentioned that he's quitting politics too due to personal reasons.
The former bureaucrat also cited people's growing disillusionment with the state's governance and the increasing strong-arm tactics of a section of leaders as his reason behind tendering his resignation. The MP expressed his disappointment over the government's delay in addressing the issues stemming from the RG Kar Hospital incident, a point of contention for the Mamata government for over a month.
"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. I think normalcy may have been restored in this state much earlier, if the caucus of the corrupt doctors was smashed & those guilty of taking improper administrative actions punished immediately after the scandalous incident happened," he wrote.
“I thought you would interfere in the ongoing movement in the old Mamata style, but I did not see it," he wrote. The MP opined that normalcy in the state would have returned earlier had the government punished those guilty of taking improper administrative actions.
Noting that he would "disassociate myself totally from politics" after his resignation, Sircar exhorted the TMC chief to “save the state”. Describing his three-year tenure as an MP, Sircar said it was a period where he actively challenged the policies of the Modi government, including its "authoritarian, divisive, discriminatory and anti-federal" measures.
On August 9, a trainee doctor was found raped and murdered inside Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. The police have arrested a man named Sanjay Roy for the crime. The CBI, which is probing the case, has also arrested the ex-principal of the hospital, Dr Sandip Ghosh, for alleged financial irregularities while running the institution.