The impasse between the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front and the Mamata Banerjee government continued even after their second meeting as the protesting medics alleged that nothing was 'formally' agreed by the state government. They added that they would continue their sit-in and not join duty. Chief Secretary Manoj Pant had met with the agitating doctors at Nabanna.
According to the doctors, the Chief Secretary agreed to all their demands during the meeting. However, when they asked for the minutes of the meeting later, they were denied. Dr Shaintini, who was part of the visiting doctors' delegation said, "Today when we went in, we were very hopeful...for 41 days we have been on streets demanding for basic human rights, justice and threat culture to end. We not only demanded our own healthcare facility to improve but also for patient care to improve...when we asked for the meeting, we were told that we needed to email them whatever our needs are and based on that they would verify that email and will circle back to us with certain central directors...we right now feel very hopeless...we were very hopeful when we walked in...we want the protest to end...we are forced to continue this protest...protest will continue until all our demands are met"
Talking on the same lines, another junior doctor said, " When the meeting was going on then Chief Secretary agreed with all our demands but after the meeting, when we were asking for minutes of the meeting, there was nothing about about our demands in the minutes...they did not focus on our demands...they asked us to mail...the minutes that we asked, they didn't give that to us..."
Earlier in the day, the state government appointed Verma as the new city police commissioner, replacing Vineet Goyal, a day after Banerjee held a meeting with the agitating junior doctors and agreed to their demands, in a bid to resolve the more than a month-long impasse over the RG Kar hospital incident. Director of Health Services (DHS) Debashis Halder, Director of Medical Education (DME) Kaustav Nayak and Deputy Commissioner of Kolkata Police's North Division Abhishek Gupta were also removed as promised by Banerjee during the meeting.
