Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Jawhar Sircar on Sunday said he has decided to resign from Parliament primarily because of the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government’s “faulty handling” of the most spontaneous public movement following the gruesome rape-murder case at the RG Kar hospital in Kolkata.
Sircar, in his letter to Trinamool Congress chief Banerjee, said he will also disassociate himself totally from politics.
“While thanking you sincerely for giving me such a great opportunity to represent the problems of West Bengal as an MP in the Rajya Sabha, I must inform you that I have decided to resign from Parliament and also from politics altogether,” the bureaucrat-turned-politician wrote in the letter.
Course correction
Taking a dig at the State government and the party leadership, Sircar said the mainstream of the agitation is non-political and a spontaneous one 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,” he said, adding this called for course correction immediately or else communal forces will capture the state.
Notably, the State government and the Trinamool Congress are alleging that the BJP and other parties have been “politicising” the death of the woman doctor at state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital last month.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been probing into the rape and murder of the 31-year-old doctor at the hospital. The body the on-duty woman doctor was found on August 9.
“I shall go to Delhi soon and offer my resignation to the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha and will also disassociate myself totally from politics. Please do something to save the state and my regards and best wishes are with you,” Sircar said in the letter to Banerjee.
Corruption allegations
Sircar also took the opportunity to voice his concerns over the lack of decisive action against alleged corruptions. He said he was quite shocked in 2022 to see on TV and print the open evidence of corruption that the former education minister had indulged in. “I made a public statement that corruption must be tackled by the party and the government, but I was heckled by senior leaders in the party. I did not resign then as I had hoped that you would carry on your public campaign against “cut money” and corruption that you had started a year earlier...I was also persuaded by will-wishers to remain as MP in order to carry on the battle against a (Modi) regime that is the greatest ever threat to Indian democracy and civil liberties,” he added.
On Sircar quitting from his post, Trinamool Congress leader Kunal Ghosh says, “Jawahar Sarkar is a respected person...He is one of the best bureaucrats in the country. This is his personal decision, his personal letter, I cannot comment on it. He has full right to take any decision about himself...We just want to say that we also agree with the spirit of his letter, the questions.”
“We are with the sentiment of the society but whatever his stand is, it is his personal decision. We also demand justice. We stand with the society,” Ghosh added
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the rape-murder case on Monday. A Bench, comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, is slated to hear the matter.
Before the Supreme Court hearing, thousands of demonstrators, mostly women, marched through the streets and formed human chains in Kolkata and other districts of the State on Sunday, demanding justice in the RG Kar hospital rape and murder case.