VC of CU asks Puja revellers to visit docs on hunger strike to show solidarity

Kolkata, Oct 8
Santa Dutta, the acting Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta (CU) has advised people to take out time during Durga Puja and visit the venue where the junior doctors are on a fast-unto-death in Kolkata.

The festival of Durga Puja will start from Thursday and Santa Dutta has urged revellers to express solidarity and visit the seven junior doctors who are sitting on a fast at Esplanade over the rape and murder of their colleague in the state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital.

“The victim junior doctor at R.G Kar is yet to get justice. The macabre event proves how unsafe women are still in their workplaces. The junior doctors are on a hunger strike in protest. So my request to the revellers is to take out some time from your pandal-hopping, visit the hunger-strike venue and express solidarity. The junior doctors are on hunger-strike for the welfare of society,” Dutta said at a seminar at CU.

Speaking on the occasion, she also made an indirect reference to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s recent comments asking people to get back into a festive mood.

“Those who believe in festival rituals will surely perform that. But there is no reason to impose festivity on people. The general festive mood is not there this year,” she said.

Her advice to the revelers echoes the observation made by the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front (WBJDF), the umbrella body spearheading the protests on this issue, that their movement could not have reached such a stage had it not received the spontaneous support of the common people.

Meanwhile, CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat issued a statement on Tuesday claiming that the victim in the RG Kar case has a new name born in the womb of protests against the barbarities she had to face.

“She is called Tilottama – one who combines in herself the best of all. The solidarity struggles for justice for Tilottama — have shaken not just Bengal but the country. Thousands of self-mobilised citizens, their conscience awakened, have come out for street protests in solidarity,” Karat’s statement read.