The junior doctors’ front countered Aniket Mahata’s actions on Friday, just a day after his resignation, and called for his apology for supposedly misrepresenting and presenting a decision of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front to the public.
The front accused Mahata of insinuating a compromise between two other junior doctors and the government, while remaining silent on their fight against the government. The front sought an apology from Mahata or an explanation about the
comments.
The front’s allegations against Mahata exposed the crack in the organisation that took the leading role in the protest movement after the rape and murder of a second-year postgraduate trainee at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in 2024.
In his resignation letter dated Thursday, Mahata stated that when he, Debashis Halder, and Asfakulla Naiya were assigned to hospitals that they had not selected during the counselling process, he declined to accept the position, whereas the other two
accepted their postings as designated by the state. Mahata’s letter included a statement asserting that he would never compromise with the government.
The junior doctors’ front, in its letter on Friday, said the decision that Naiya and Halder will join the hospitals where the state government posted them was a collective decision of the front and Mahata was also aware of it. “You have remained silent about their legal battles, termed their protest as a compromise with the government,” the letter from JDF said.
The back and forth of allegations by Mahata and the junior doctors’ front over Thursday and Friday made it clear that the crack between the two was quite wide.
The letter, addressed to Mahata, came on a day he appealed for crowdfunding to pay the bond money for not serving as a senior resident in a state-government-run hospital, a decision he said he was forced to take as the state government refused to depute him at RG Kar Medical College despite court orders.
“I have not to join as a senior resident. It has been several months since the senior residents were given their postings. Despite being told by the courts to post me at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, the state has not done so. I do not think I will be able to work under this state government,” he said.
Medical students who complete their postgraduation studies from state-run medical colleges in Bengal have to serve three years in state-run hospitals. If they do not serve the tenure, they have to pay ₹10 lakh for each year to the state government as a penalty.
Mahata said on Friday that he came from a “lower-middle-class” family and did not have the means to pay ₹30 lakh. “I am appealing to everyone to help me pay the government this money,” he said at a news conference.
Mahata, Halder and Naiya are the three doctors who went to court against the state government for not posting them in the hospital that they picked during the counselling of senior residents.
In his letter of resignation from the junior doctors’ front, Mahata said the front’s decision to form an executive committee, without taking legal opinion, was the reason that compelled him to resign. He called the way the committee was being set up “undemocratic” and “unlawful”.
Asfakulla Naiya, one of the faces of the junior doctors’ protests in 2024, said the board of trustees in charge of the front had only five members. “The executive committee will have about 40 members. It is far more democratic to have 40 members than 5 members to head an organisation,” he said.
He said he does not support Mahata’s decision to withdraw from senior resident service. “Our demands included reforms in the state’s healthcare system. We have to do this by serving the state-run hospitals. Senior resident service is not a job, it is a commitment we make to serve while doing our postgraduation degrees,” said Naiya.
Another JDF member said the committee will definitely seek legal advice on how to function, but after completing the election process. Mahata demanded that the election be held after taking legal opinion.
In a statement issued on Friday, the Resident Doctors Association (RDA) of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital convened a meeting on Monday where it said it expected RDAs of all medical colleges to join. The statement said Mahata resigned from the junior doctors’ front “citing repeated incidents of illegal and undemocratic activities carried out by certain individuals”. It said the front is “not owned or controlled by a handful of individuals.”
