Agitating doctors decline Mamata's invite for meeting tomorrow
Kolkata, Jun 14: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday invited the agitating junior doctors for a meeting at the state secretariat, which they declined saying it is a ploy to break their stir.
She convened the meeting to find a solution to the ongoing impasse disrupting normal services at all state-run medical college and hospitals for four days.
After the protesting doctors did not turn up on Friday, Banerjee gave them time again at 5 pm on Saturday for the meeting at state secretariat Nabanna, senior physician Sukumar Mukherjee said.
Mukherjee along with other senior doctors, who were not part of the agitating medicos, went to meet Banerjee and held a two-hour-long meeting with the chief minister at the secretariat to find out a solution.
Banerjee then asked Director of Medical Education Pradip Mitra to invite three or four junior doctors to the secretariat for the meeting.
They, however, refused to go the meeting.
"This is a ploy to break our unity, our agitation. We will not attend any meeting at the state secretariat. The chief minister has to come here (NRS Medical College and Hospital) and deliver an unconditional apology for the manner in which she had addressed us during her visit to SSKM Hospital yesterday," a spokesperson of the joint forum of junior doctors said.
While visiting the SSKM Hospital on Thursday, Banerjee had contended that outsiders had entered medical colleges to create disturbances and the agitation is a conspiracy by the CPI(M) and the BJP.
Mukherjee said the chief minister waited for the junior doctors to come to the state secretariat on Friday night and when they did not turn up, gave them another time for a meeting on Saturday evening.
"We hope some junior doctors will turn up," he said.
"We had come to meet the chief minister on our own to find a solution to the impasse. She has briefed us about the steps her government has decided to take in fulfilling the demands of the junior doctors," Mukherjee said.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
