‘Generic Letters, No Legal Value’: Bengal Govt Rejects Doctors’ Mass Resignation

Kolkata: The West Bengal government on Saturday rejected the mass resignations of senior doctors in support of their junior colleagues as generic with no legal value.

This came after the Mamata Banerjee government received several resignation letters from doctors of RG Kar Hospital and other government-run hospitals in Kolkata and other parts of West Bengal this week in support of the junior doctors’ fast-onto-death strike in the state capital and Siliguri since October 5, demanding justice for the PG trainee medic in rape and murder case.

Speaking at a presser, chief advisor to the CM, Alapan Bandyopadhyay, said: “There has been confusion recently regarding the so-called resignation of senior doctors working in government medical colleges and hospitals. We have been receiving certain letters which do refer to mass resignation as a point of reference. Certain pages without any mention of the subject have been annexed to such letters. Those annexed subjectless papers do indeed contain some signatures without the designations mentioned. These mass resignations, as they are being described, actually have no legal value…This kind of generic letter has no legal standing.”

He added that an employee needs to send in his/her resignation personally to the employer as per service rules. “Resignation is a subject between the employer and the employed to be discussed in terms of specific service rules. So these press releases or these bunches of signatures of people whose identities have not been spelt out in detail in all the papers… this kind of a generic letter has no legal standing. Each page has to be signed by the individual who is tendering such an important paper and the matter has to be seen as one between the employer and the individual employee,” he emphasised.

Notably, several senior doctors had clarified that their resignations were “symbolic” and were intended to get the government to engage in discussions with the junior doctors. “Our resignation is symbolic, aimed at prompting the government to engage in discussions. We do not want the patients to suffer. We are treating them and will continue to do so because it is our duty and we are morally obliged to do that,” Dr Sunit Hazra, an orthopaedic surgeon at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, told PTI.

They, however, warned that they could submit individual resignations if they did not see forward movement.