How Trinamool’s ‘Dirty Tricks Department’ Is Trying To Sabotage Junior Doctors’ Movement In Bengal

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has launched a desperate effort to regain the ground it lost in state-run medical colleges and hospitals of the state after the brutal rape-murder of a postgraduate intern at RG Kar Medical College Hospital in early August. 

While alleged attempts to cover up the heinous crime and destroy evidence evoked widespread condemnation and censure, the TMC also found itself battling grave charges of corruption, nepotism, misuse of office, malfeasance and malpractices by many doctors affiliated to or close to it (the ruling party). 

All these charges, especially that of a widely prevalent ‘threat culture’ in government medical colleges and hospitals, surfaced after the rape-murder at RG Kar. 

The ‘threat culture’ that many doctors close to the Trinamool Congress have been accused of perpetuating is a loose term for various grave misconducts. These include forcing medical undergraduates, postgraduates and junior doctors to either join or support the ruling party, awarding them marks in exams in exchange for large sums of money, manipulating transfers and postings of doctors, giving admissions in postgraduate courses to party faithful, issuing threats to even senior doctors and hospital administrators who do not toe the party line and sexual exploitation of students and interns. 

Many doctors belonging to the notorious ‘North Bengal lobby’ close to the top leadership of the TMC have faced disciplinary action, including de-registration, cancellation of their licences and disbarment from campuses for their misdeeds. 

The widespread and intense public outrage over alleged attempts to cover up the rape-murder and destroy evidence at the crime scene and misdeeds of doctors close to the TMC put the state government and the ruling party, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on the back foot. 

Realising the public mood, Banerjee and her party wisely refrained from trying to thwart the long agitation by junior doctors under the banner of the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front (WBJDF) through harsh administrative measures or other means. 

Even though the agitation had crippled healthcare services in medical college hospitals in the state, Banerjee held her patience and even sat with the agitating doctors, made sympathetic noises and ultimately agreed to almost all their demands which led to the doctors calling off their hunger strike and returning to work on 20 October. 

But the WBJDF has kept up token protests and has set a deadline for the state government to meet their demands which include implementing foolproof safety and welfare measures for junior doctors and interns in government hospitals, holding elections to students’ bodies in medical colleges, and conducting impartial probes into the misdeeds of a section of doctors affiliated to the ruling party in the state. 

The WBJDF has warned of resuming its stir if it feels that the government is going slow in implementing its demands. The Front said it would monitor the state government’s actions very closely. 

This threat looming over the ruling party and the government has triggered grave concern in the TMC’s top leadership, which is also smarting from the humiliation it endured over the last three months since early August. 

They felt that allowing the WBJDF to go unchallenged now would embolden other sections of the citizenry to take on the government and the ruling party. 

Trinamool’s Gameplan

Thus, the Trinamool Congress’ 'dirty tricks department' got into action immediately after the agitating junior doctors scaled down their stir and resumed their duties early last week. 

The TMC got several junior doctors, who are the party's silent supporters, to form an association to rival the WBJDF. 

“Only the most notorious doctors who over-exposed themselves and had gone overboard with their misdeeds found themselves outed and their names coming out in the media. But the TMC has quite a number of junior doctors who are its supporters and have kept their heads down. These junior doctors have now been marshalled to form the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Association (WBJDA),” a functionary of the WBJDF who was at the forefront of the agitation told Swarajya. 

The WBJDA was formed on 26 October. Shockingly, it even included some doctors accused of grave malfeasance. Most WBJDA leaders and members owe allegiance to former TMC Rajya Sabha MP Santanu Sen and former TMC minister Nirmal Majhi. 

Both Majhi and Sen are doctors. While Sen was the national president and state secretary of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Maji served as the IMA’s Bengal branch president. 

Sen and Maji lead one faction of doctors in Bengal, while TMC MLA Sudipto Roy, who has also been the IMA national president, leads the other faction. Roy’s faction includes the disgraced former principal of RG Kar Medical College, Sandip Ghosh, and other doctors who have earned notoriety. 

Roy himself is under the scanner of the CBI which is probing corruption and other acts of criminal misconduct in RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. 

WBJDA president Rajib Biswas, who is a junior doctor at Diamond Harbour Medical College (Diamond Harbour is Abhishek Banerjee’s Lok Sabha constituency), lost no time in firing salvos at the WBJDF. 

“The WBJDF has been infiltrated by left and ultra-left elements who have hijacked the movement for their own political gains. We supported the movement initially to demand justice for ‘Abhaya,’ but were dismayed at the manner in which our fellow doctors in the WBJDF were manipulated by left and ultra-left politicians and ideologues and how the whole movement turned into an anti-TMC stir,” said Biswas. 

There is, admittedly, a lot of truth in the WBJDF being infiltrated by the left and ultra-left elements who managed to hijack the movement (read this).

He added, “We were also sad to see that the whole movement had turned into one whose sole aim was to malign the TMC and the state government and besmirch the fair name of our state. Hence, we decided to form an apolitical body that will articulate the genuine concerns of junior doctors.”

But there are no takers for Biswas’ contention that the WBJDA is apolitical. “The WBJDA has been formed by the TMC to undermine our movement. That association comprises doctors who are accused of many crimes. It is a completely political platform,” said WBJDF’s Debasish Haldar. 

The WBJDA has also levelled charges of financial impropriety against the WBJDF. WBJDA convenor Shreesh Chakraborty said his organisation wrote to the state chief secretary Sunday (October 27) demanding an audit of the Rs 1.7 crore reportedly raised by the Front during its stir.

Haldar (of the WBJDF) retorted that the “baseless allegations” hurled by the WBJDA only prove that the new association has been formed to undermine the junior doctors’ movement and create divisions within the state’s medical fraternity. 

But the TMC’s 'dirty tricks department' did not rest just there. It spawned another body of junior doctors — the Progressive Junior Doctors Association (PJDA), formed on 29 October. 

The PJDA has very cleverly positioned itself against the WBJDA and accuses the latter of being a body of tainted junior doctors accused of various misdeeds.

“The gang of Sandip Ghosh (the disgraced former principal of RG Kar Medical College) has formed the WBJDA. We fully support the WBJDF that led the doctors’ movement,” said PJDA general secretary Rituparna Koyal, a junior doctor at the SSKM Hospital. 

Several senior doctors told Swarajya that the formation of the two bodies — the WBJDA and the PJDA — is a ploy by the TMC to create chaos among the doctors and ultimately divide the medical fraternity. 

“While the WBJDF has taken on the WBJDA directly and has levelled allegations against the latter, the PJDA has overtly taken the WBJDF’s side and is opposing the WBJDA. However, the WBJDA and PJDA are two sides of the same coin and are working in tandem to create confusion in the ranks of junior doctors.

“This is a clever move by the TMC to weaken and sabotage the junior doctors’ stir,” said a senior cardiologist attached to the government-run NRS Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. 

However, junior doctors affiliated with the WBJDF told Swarajya they are vigilant and will not allow these TMC-affiliated bodies to create divisions in their ranks. “We are confident of defeating their nasty games,” said Anirban Kar, a junior doctor serving in a government-run medical college hospital in Kolkata.

Also Read: Why The Sharp 'Left' Turn In Bengal’s Junior Doctors’ Movement Threatens Progress After RG Kar Tragedy