Bengal chief secretary Manoj Pant called a team of junior doctors for a meeting on Wednesday in a move to end the gridlock between the state government and the protesting medics on hunger strike in Calcutta.

The meeting, which will discuss the doctors' demands of a clean-up of the public healthcare system, will be held at 7.45 pm on Wednesday at Swasthya Bhavan, the state health department headquarters in Salt Lake.

Source by the Correspondent.

The email said the junior doctors may send 8-10 representatives to the meeting with the task force that was formed in the aftermath of the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9.

The junior doctors, seven of whom have been on a hunger strike for the past four days, agreed to the invitation and said they are going for the meeting. They highlighted that their demands remain the same.

“We are not going to the meeting not because we are weak; we are going there to raise our demands. Our 10-point demand remains the same,” one of the protesting doctors who is on hunger strike told the media.

Governor C. V. Ananda Bose is supposed to visit the junior doctors' protest site at the Dorina Crossing in Esplanade on Wednesday evening, ABP Ananda reported.

The junior doctors have received support from their compatriots across the country.

More than 200 senior doctors in government hospitals across Bengal have resigned in solidarity with the protesting junior doctors, blaming an “unresponsive” state government.

Earlier on Wednesday, many members of civil society wrote a letter to chief minister Mamata Banerjee seeking her intervention.

“We appeal to the chief minister and the chief secretary to personally intervene and talk to the junior doctors, apprise them on the steps taken so far and give a deadline for the completion of the security measures that are being taken. Doctors save our lives. We cannot allow their lives to be endangered by a prolonged hunger strike. The government has a huge responsibility,” said the letter, which was in Bengali.