TMC MP Sircar quits, cites Bengal govt’s ‘poor handling’ of Kolkata stir

TMC MP Jawhar Sircar today announced his decision to resign from Parliament and quit politics to protest the West Bengal Government’s “faulty handling of the stir” against the rape and murder of a doctor at RG Kar hospital.

Call Cabinet meet: Guv

West Bengal Governor Dr CV Ananda Bose on Sunday directed CM Mamata Banerjee to call an emergency Cabinet meeting to decide on public demand to replace Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal

He wrote to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on a day that marked the completion of a month since the woman medic was found dead with multiple injuries at the hospital. Sircar said he “suffered patiently” for a month since the terrible incident hoping for the CM’s direct intervention on the matter. Ruing that it did not happen, Sircar said whatever punitive steps that the state government was taking now were “too little and quite late”.

“Normalcy may have been restored in the state much earlier if the caucus of corrupt doctors was smashed and those taking improper administrative actions punished immediately after the scandalous incident happened,” Sircar wrote without taking any names.

Posting his letter to Mamata on X, the TMC leader said he would soon visit Delhi and hand over his resignation to the Rajya Sabha Chairman. “Believe me the present spontaneous outpouring of public anger is against the unchecked overbearing attitude of the favoured few and the corrupt,” Sircar wrote noting the amassing of wealth by some of the TMC leaders, including panchayat members, by resorting to rampant corruption.

“In all my years, I have not seen such angst and lack of confidence against the government, even when it says something correct or factual,” Sircar, a retired IAS officer, wrote.

The former Prasar Bharati chief, who was handpicked by Mamata three years ago to represent the state in the Upper House, noted that the core of the ongoing protest movement was non-political and a spontaneous one. It would not be right to label it as political and take a confrontational stand, he said.

Sukhendu Shekhar Ray is the only other TMC MP to have spoken out against the “dubious” role of the police who were initially entrusted with the probe in the case. Later, Roy received summons from the police for daring to question them.