The agitating junior doctors declined to attend the meeting with West Bengal Mamata Chief Minister Banerjee at 5 PM on Thursday as their demand for LIVE streaming was not met. “we waited for two hours to meet with the junior doctors, but they did not enter the venue,” CM Mamata said after she was left waiting for two hours at Kolkata’s Nabanna Hall.

The West Bengal government extended a fresh invitation to the agitating junior doctors, allocating a 5 pm slot on Thursday for a meeting to resolve the deadlock at RG Kar hospital, yet it declined the protesters’ request for a live broadcast of the discussions.

Kolkata: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee is waiting in the meeting hall for the protesting junior doctors. The doctors remain firm that they will not attend the meeting without live streaming pic.twitter.com/1ydabnzsGl
— IANS (@ians_india) September 12, 2024

This marks the third proposal for dialogue extended by the state government in the past two days, all of which have been turned down by the agitators who have stipulated specific conditions for the meeting.

Although the government conceded to the doctors’ insistence on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee attending the meeting, it refused their demand for a live telecast and limited the number of delegates to no more than 15, contrary to the protesters’ preference for a 30-member delegation.

In a letter from Chief Secretary Manoj Pant to the junior doctors, who have been staging a sit-in outside the state health department headquarters in Salt Lake for almost 48 hours, the government expressed its willingness to engage with the delegates to facilitate the smooth operation of healthcare services. However, it emphasized that such a meeting must not contravene the Supreme Court’s directive to resume work.