West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee (ANI photo)

KOLKATA: With a promise of "protection", West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Saturday asked "willing" junior doctors to resume work, while appealing to the others to come to the negotiating table at the state secretariat, Nabanna, for the sake of "humanity". But she ruled out going to the NRS Medical College and Hospital campus - the epicentre of the standoff - as demanded by the striking junior doctors.

She assured the doctors her government was against taking any coercive action, like arrests or imposition of ESMA, to get them back to work.

However, her appeal was rebuffed by junior doctors at NRS, but it indicated a change in tack in the government's efforts to end the five-day strike.

Implicit in Mamata's overtures on Saturday was an attempt to present the administration as reasonable and flexible and willing to negotiate. She said all demands of the striking doctors had been accepted and termed the attack on them as unfortunate.

"I had sent my ministers, principal secretary to meet the doctors, waited for five hours to meet their delegation yesterday and today, but they did not come. You have to give respect to the constitutional body," she said. She also reminded the striking doctors that despite the existence of ESMA that had been used in nine states - including Gujarat - to crack down on strikes that disrupted essential services, she had desisted from enforcing it. "We never arrested a single person… we didn't arrest a single doctor… we didn't clamp ESMA. This government has a human face," she said.

"There will be a security audit of all medical colleges . Each hospital will have an assistant commissioner-level officer in charge of security," she said, adding that she was ready to accommodate other demands as well and even suggested that the striking doctors could meet with the governor or chief secretary if they wished to end the impasse.

Almost 1,000 doctors have resigned in the state en mass since Thursday evening.

IMA all-India president Shantanu Sen, who met administrators, senior doctors and police at NRS to discuss how the stir could be resolved and addressed protesting junior doctors at the general body meeting emerged to comment there were "outsiders" with vested interest who were inciting the junior doctors to keep the crisis alive. This left junior doctors fuming and further hardened their stance.

