MAMATA FIGHTS CREDIBILITY CRISIS AS BENGAL CONTINUES TO SEETHE

Observers say that Mamata Banerjee, for the first time in her career, is facing an opponent whom she cannot vilify or blame politically.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

In a surprise move on Saturday, to end the impasse between her government and protesting doctors, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee visited the site where the medicos are staging a sit-in and addressed them. She said she had come as a Didi, not as Chief Minister. The doctors have been on protest strike since a trainee doctor was raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata last month and began a sit-in on Tuesday outside Swasthya Bhavan, the headquarters of the West Bengal Health Department. There have been moves for a discussion between the state government and the doctors since then but they have been getting stalled, most recently over the protestors' demand for live streaming of the talks.

In a dramatic standoff at the West Bengal state Secretariat Nabanna on Thursday (September 12), striking resident doctors from state-run hospitals arrived for talks with Mamata Banerjee but then refused to enter the auditorium as the government would not allow them to livestream the meeting.

They have demanded the suspension of top Health Department officials and police officials who were involved in "evidence tampering" and who tried to deliberately suppress the incident of rape and murder of the junior doctor. The junior doctors demanded an end to "threat culture" practised by the ruling party in every medical college.

On Saturday, Banerjee struck a conciliatory tone, asking if she could address the doctors. Amid sloganshouting she said in Bengali, "Please listen to me for five minutes and then shout slogans, it is your democratic right to do so. I have been waiting for a long time.