Sravasti Dasgupta 
New Delhi: Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Jawhar Sircar resigned from the party on Sunday (September 8) and announced his decision to resign from the Rajya Sabha in protest against the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government handling of the R.G.Kar rape and murder case and the “caucus of the corrupt”.
In a letter addressed to chief minister Mamata Banerjee, seen by The Wire, Sircar said that the time now is not to take a “confrontational stand” but for course correction as the ongoing protests in the state are “as much for Abhaya as it is against the state government and the party.”
Sircar, a former bureaucrat, who became a Rajya Sabha MP in 2021, said that he had waited patiently for a month after the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor at the state government run R.G. Kar Hospital on August 9. He said he had hoped for Banerjee’s “direct intervention” and said that the present outpouring of public anger is against the “overbearing attitude of the favoured few and the corrupt.”
“In all my years, I have not seen such angst and total no-confidence against the government, even when it says something correct or factual. I have suffered patiently for a month since the terrible incident at R.G. Kar Hospital, and was hoping for your direct intervention with the agitating junior doctors in the old style of Mamata Banerjee,” he said in the letter.
“It has not happened and whatever punitive steps that government is taking now are too little and quite late. I think normalcy may have been restored in this state 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.”
While Banerjee has accused the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) of politicising the rape and murder amid ongoing protests in Kolkata and other parts of the state, Sircar directly took aim at the TMC government’s “confrontational” attitude and said that the time is for introspection and “course correction”.
He said that he believes that the mainstream agitation remains non-political and spontaneous and “it is not correct to take a confrontational stand by labelling it political.”
“Of course the opposition parties are trying to fish in troubled waters, but the mass of the youth and the common people who are out agitating on the streets every second day do not encourage them. They want no politics, they want justice and punishment.”
“Let us analyse frankly and realise that the movement is as much for Abhaya as it is against the state government and the party. This calls for course correction immediately or else communal forces will capture this state.”
Sircar said that he had to list out his reasons in writing as he had not had the opportunity to meet Banerjee in several months, and that he would be going to Delhi soon to resign from the Rajya Sabha, while disassociating from politics completely.
“Please do something to save the state and my regards and best wishes are with you,” he wrote.
Earlier, another TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Ray had also publicly dissented against the inaction in the R.G.Kar case and announced his protest alongside the Reclaim the Night protests in Kolkata, and other parts of the state on August 14 saying that he would join the protest, “come what may.”