300 doctors resign in West Bengal

Nearly 300 doctors resigned from government hospitals in India's West Bengal today as their protest against an attack on a colleague earlier this week in Kolkata escalated.

Doctors across the country will boycott work on Monday to express solidarity with their Bengal counterparts whose strike continued for the fourth day, reports NDTV. 

Junior doctors in several states boycotted work, affecting medical services. Blaming the Mamata Banerjee government for the doctors' strike in Bengal, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan appealed to her to "not make it a prestige issue". The striking doctors have said they want an unconditional apology from Banerjee to withdraw their protest, the report also says.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has directed members of its state branches to stage protests and wear black badges in solidarity with West Bengal doctors, adds our New Delhi correspondent.

The junior doctors in Kolkata have been agitating since Tuesday demanding adequate security in government hospitals after two of their colleagues were attacked and seriously injured by relatives of a patient who died at the state-run Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital in the city.

Scores of doctors in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur Thiruvananthapuram and other cities staged protests. Doctors at Delhi's All India Institute of Medical also followed suit.

However, emergency services were available at one or two hospitals, including NRS Medical College and Hospital, in Kolkata this morning.

The spokesperson of the joint forum of junior doctors in West Bengal Dr Arindam Dutta said protest demonstrations would continue till their demands are met.

"The manner in which the chief minister threatened the junior doctors is quite unexpected... This is an insult to our community. We also condemn this... She has to apologise for what she said yesterday.

"We are not outsiders and this agitation is spontaneous... We are contemplating mass resignations," Dutta said.

Expressing solidarity with their junior colleagues, senior doctors said that their demands were quite justified.

Meanwhile, the Principal and the Superintendent of the NRS Medical College and Hospital Saibal Mukherjee and Saurabh Chattopadhyay respectively submitted their resignations on Thursday night.

West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi had on Thursday appealed to junior doctors to rejoin their duties.

Indian Health Minister Harsh Vardhan urged the doctors to hold only a symbolic protests and carry out their duties.

A team of doctors had met the Governor at the Raj Bhavan on Thursday and apprised him about the assaults on doctors by relatives of a patient who died at the NRS Medical College and Hospital on Saturday night.