The road leading to Swasthya Bhavan looked starkly different on the first Sunday after the junior doctors ended their 11-day-long sit-in on Friday night and returned to work in essential services at the medical colleges and hospitals.

On Sunday, the road called Street Number 2, which leads to Swasthya Bhavan from the Techno India University intersection, looked like a regular thoroughfare in Sector V.

There was no one and no slogans at the site that had become synonymous with the protest by junior doctors who were joined by people from all parts of the city and its fringes.

Till Friday night, graffiti made with spray paint and markers were on the boundary walls of several buildings at the protest site, electrical distribution boxes and even the maps of Sector V.

The road had several murals and paintings on it. Slogans like “Blame the system, not the victim”, “Why did you kill my sister?” and “We want justice”, among others, were painted everywhere including the paver blocks of the sidewalks.

Both flanks of roads had tent-like structures that had been set up with frameworks of bamboo and lined with tarpaulin sheets that served as the roof. Rows of bio-toilets stood at the site opposite the Sector V office of the West Bengal Forest Development Corporation.

All of this was gone on Sunday.

The prefabricated structures that served as food kiosks and were used to set up Abahaya clinics by the protesting doctors, too, had been dismantled.

The rows of guardrails that the cops had put up to cordon off the entry to the gates of Swasthya Bhavan had also been taken away.

The graffiti on the walls had been masked by a fresh coat of paint. The messages on the road had been covered by a layer of bitumen.

On Sunday, The Telegraph spotted teams of workers painting the walls and the sidewalks.

A senior official of the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority (NDITA) said the walls had been painted by teams of labourers and the street leading to the NDITA office had also been cleaned.

On Saturday, the urban development and municipal affairs minister, Firhad Hakim, said the clean-up activity was being done as it was an office area that is visited by many every day.

“This is an office area and needs to look clean. Sector V has offices that are visited by many every day,” Hakim said.

Amrita Bhattacharya, a junior doctor who had become one of the faces of the protest, said despite the slogans being wiped away, the movement was now ingrained in people’s minds.

“One cannot just wipe slogans and cover up graffiti and think that people in the city will forget. We have not forgotten,” she said.