Jawhar Sircar writes to Mamata, offers to resign from RS post and politics

Kolkata: Urging her to do something to "save the state", Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha MP Jawhar Sircar, on Sunday, wrote to the party chairperson and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, announcing his resignation from the Parliamentarian post and from politics due to state government's alleged "faulty handling" of the public movement following the rape and murder at RG Kar Medical College & Hospital.

Sircar wrote on X: "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".

In his letter, he wrote that he "suffered patiently" for a month since the RG Kar incident and was hoping for Mamata Banerjee's direct intervention with the agitating junior doctors.

He wrote, "whatever punitive steps that the government is taking now are too little and quite late". Sircar said normalcy could 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".

Sircar wrote he believes that the mainstream of the agitation is "non-political" and "it is not correct to take a confrontational stand by labelling it political”. He opined that the “movement is as much for Abhaya as it is against the state government and the party”.

He also said a section of party leaders are amassing excess wealth and that the state is unable to accept this “extravagant corruption and domination”.

“The present spontaneous outpouring of public anger is against this unchecked overbearing attitude of the favoured few and the corrupt,” he wrote.

Sircar said he shall go to Delhi soon and offer his resignation to the chairman of the Rajya Sabha and will also dissociate himself totally from politics.

Reacting to this development, TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh admitted that certain claims made by Sircar are also being raised by a section of party leaders with the only difference being that it is being conveyed within the party. Ghosh said Sircar had every right to take the decision.

However, TMC MP Saugata Roy called Sircar “self-centred” and claimed such persons ought not to be nominated by the party.

He said Sircar had no responsibility towards the party and had no connection with the public. Roy alleged that Sircar always had a tendency to desert the party in difficult times.

Sircar, in 2022, had also expressed his wish to resign in the wake of the school recruitment scam where former Education minister Partha Chatterjee was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on money laundering charges.