March 23: The chief minister today sought to allay fears of doctors in private hospitals, saying all but 0.1 per cent of them were good and she had "love and respect" for them.

She clarified that the West Bengal Clinical Establishments (Registration, Regulation and Transparency) Act, which aims to keep tabs on private hospitals, had nothing to do with her nephew Abhishek Banerjee needing to be treated outside the state after an "unsuccessful surgery" at a city hospital following a car accident.

"This bill is not against doctors. I love and respect doctors of private hospitals. Why are they thinking I am against them?" Mamata Banerjee asked while speaking to ABP Ananda.

She said the doctors "who must be involved in wrongdoing" were fearing that the new act and the West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission, set up under the law, would expose them. So, they are trying to influence the other doctors against the act.

"Doctor- der ekta section, ekta portion, 0.1 per cent o noy.... tara kara? Tara nischoi kichhu aporadh koren. Tader mone ei proshno ta dhukchhe keno (One section of doctors, one portion, less than 0.1 per cent.... Who are they? They must be involved in some crime? Why is this question at all troubling them)?" she said.

"Many doctors I know go out of their way to treat people. They give them a new life. They have nothing to fear."

The act has been formulated "not to target doctors" but to rein in hospitals. "Remember, it is the clinical establishments act, its aim is to keep the institutions and their managements in check," Mamata said.

She said only a handful of private clinics were dishonest but all were getting a bad name because of them. "We don't want that to happen. The private institutions are our pride."

The chief minister pointed out that the regulatory commission lacked the power to cancel the registration of doctors. "There is a mechanism to cancel the registration of doctors. That can only be done by the West Bengal Medical Council," she said.

Mamata appealed against looking at the act "as a political vendetta", framed "for political gain or in the light of one's personal gains.... This is not an act of vengeance."

Mamata spoke on health care for 21 minutes in the interview, during the course of which she stressed as many as four times that she thought that over 99 per cent of the doctors were good.

She said she had been contemplating an act to reign in private hospitals long before Abhishek's accident. She cited in this context what had happened to the late Akbar Ali Khondkar, who had been elected to the Lok Sabha from Serampore on a Trinamul ticket in 1998 and 1999.

"He was treated at Apollo (Gleneagles Hospitals) in the early 2000s. He had a liver problem. Later, I took him to a private institute in Delhi. He died after receiving four of the seven scheduled dialyses. Had the treatment here been correct, his kidneys would not have been affected," she said.

When her attention was drawn to how leaders in some cases were fixing treatment costs, Mamata said the commission would look into such cases as well. "This shouldn't have happened," she said.

Cooch Behar MLA and Trinamul leader Udayan Guha had announced late last month that no doctor there could demand more than Rs 250 for consultation.