TMC MP quits politics over Kolkata rape-murder protest
Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Jawhar Sircar has announced his decision to resign from the Rajya Sabha and politics, citing the West Bengal government's handling of the Kolkata doctor's rape and murder case. In a letter addressed to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Sircar expressed his disappointment with her lack of intervention in the matter. He stated that he would submit his resignation to Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar in Delhi.
Sircar criticizes government's response to doctor's murder
"I thought you would interfere in the ongoing movement in the old Mamata style, but I did not see it," he wrote. "The ongoing agitation of doctors was against the unchecked overbearing attitude of the favored few and the corrupt." He also stated that there was a lack of confidence in people against the government, adding he had waited for a month since the incident at RG Kar Hospital, hoping for Banerjee's direct intervention with agitating junior doctors.
Read the full letter here
Sircar expresses disappointment over corruption allegations
"It has not happened and whatever punitive steps the government is taking now are too little and quite late," he said. He added that in all his years, he has never seen such angst and total no-confidence against the government, "even when it says something correct or factual." "Normalcy may have been restored..much earlier, if the caucus of the corrupt doctors was smashed and those guilty of taking improper administrative actions punished immediately after the scandalous incident happened," he wrote.
'I can live without embarrassment'
Sircar also expressed his shock at the open evidence of corruption involving former education minister Partha Chatterjee. He stated that he had made a public statement urging the party to address the issue, but he had been heckled by senior party figures. "After 48 years in the IAS, I can live without embarrassment in a small middle-class flat next to a big slum and drive a very ordinary 9-year-old car," he concluded.
