Kolkata horror: TMC MP Jawhar Sircar to quit Rajya Sabha in protest

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha Member Jawhar Sircar on Sunday announced his decision to resign from Parliament to protest the recent alleged murder and rape of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical Hospital and claimed he would also quit politics.

In a letter to TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Sircar urge her to do "something" to protect the state.

The former bureaucrat, in a two-page letter, said, "I cannot stay any more (in the party) under the present circumstance."

He said he wrote the letter to the Chief Minister to inform her about his decision to quit the MP post and would soon meet the Rajya Sabha Chairman to submit his resignation letter.

“I thought you would interfere in the ongoing movement in the old Mamata style, but I did not see it," he said, criticising the state government’s handling of the developments that followed he doctor’s alleged murder.

Claiming that he became increasingly disillusioned as the state government seemed quite unconcerned about corruption, Sircar said he was under pressure from family members to quit not only the Rajya Sabha but also politics.

“I have suffered patiently for a month since the terrible incident at RG Kar Hospital and was hoping for your ( CM) direct intervention with the agitating junior doctors, in the old style of Mamata Banerjee. It has not happened and whatever punitive steps the government is taking now are too little and quite late,” the letter of 70-year-old Sircar said.

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I am quitting as MP primarily because of WB government’s faulty handling of the most spontaneous public movement following the terrible rape-murder case at RG Kar Hospital.
Quitting politics— to be with the people in their struggle for justice.
My commitment to values unchanged pic.twitter.com/V98R06ziny

— Jawhar Sircar (@jawharsircar) September 8, 2024 >

Sircar said during his three-year tenure as a Member of Parliament he actively challenged the policies of the Narendra Modi government, including its "authoritarian, divisive, discriminatory and anti-federal" measures.