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Updated: Jun 15, 2019 20:21 IST

With the ongoing strike by junior doctors in Bengal entering the fifth day on Saturday, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee today said the state government accepts all their demands and asked them to resume work at the earliest.

“We accept all their demands. I had sent my ministers, principal secretary to meet the doctors. They waited for five hours both yesterday and today. However, the doctors did not turn up. You have to give respect to the constitutional body,” Banerjee said while addressing the media in Kolkata.

Drawing parallels with other states in the past, the chief minister also reiterated that the Bengal government did not want to invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) against the agitating junior doctors. “We did not arrest a single person. We will not take any police action. Health services cannot continue like this. I am not going to take any stringent action. Let good sense prevail,” Banerjee said.

Junior doctors across West Bengal are on a strike since Tuesday after two of their colleagues were brutally attacked and beaten by the relatives of a patient who died at the NRS Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.

The agitation had spread beyond Bengal across 17 states and Union Territories during the week. Resident doctors of the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) and Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi had also boycotted work on Friday to express solidarity with their colleagues in Bengal. Support for the agitating doctors had poured in from the medical fraternity across the country.

Over the past two days, as many as 640 doctors in Bengal -- professors, associate professors, assistant professors and medical officers - have written to the authorities saying that they would like to resign from the services.

Earlier on Thursday, the chief minister had also alleged the presence of ‘outsiders’ triggering angry reactions from the protesting doctors.