Student leader Ratul Banerjee (right), who fell ill during the talks at Medical College and Hospital, is helped out of the room by a friend. Picture by Tamaghna Banerjee

Junior doctors of Medical College and Hospital decided to return to work after three rounds of talks with the authorities on Monday, but said they would continue their relay hunger strike.

Negotiations stretched from noon till 6pm, by the end of which only a partial solution to the campus unrest emerged. The junior doctors agreed to call off the ceasework on condition that the authorities would reopen the main hostel and withdraw the police cases against four students.

A clash between rival student unions battling for control of the main hostel led the authorities to order the boarders out within two hours on Friday evening. The junior doctors called an indefinite strike immediately because 45 of them stay in that hostel.

“The authorities refused to bend and showed little consideration, but we chose to lift the ceasework so as not to torment patients any longer,” Soumyakanti Bag, a leader of the Medical College Democratic Students’ Association, said.

His colleague Ratul Banerjee said the hunger strike would continue outside the principal’s office until the authorities stated in writing that the hostel would be reopened.

The deputy medical superintendent of the institution, Amarendra Nath Biswas, said the management would keep its word if the students and interns kept theirs. “The evacuation notice will be withdrawn as soon as normality returns. The charges against four junior doctors will be withdrawn, too,” he said.

Sources said if the hostel was reopened, the democratic students’ association would have to allow the 27 SFI supporters at the epicentre of the controversy to stay there.