The “mass resignation” letters signed by faculty members of various medical colleges have no “legal standing”, the chief advisor to the chief minister, Alapan Bandyopadhyay, said on Saturday.

A resignation is an individual subject involving the employer and the employed and generic letters mentioning mass resignation have no legal standing, Bandyopadhyay added.

The government wants to clear the confusion created following such mass resignation letters, Bandyopadhyay said.

Such letters are not accepted as letters of resignation, he added.

“We have been receiving letters which refer to mass resignation. These mass resignations have no legal value. This kind of generic letter has no legal standing. Such letters are not accepted as resignation letters,” he
said.

“They (the doctors) are employed personally and have to resign personally. The government wanted to clear the confusion created by such letters,” he said.

Bandyopadhyay said that from the letters that have reached the government so far, about 200 faculty members have signed through such “mass resignation” letters.

A faculty member of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital had earlier told The Telegraph that the letters were meant to show their solidarity with the hunger strike by junior doctors.

The faculty member said that the doctors were aware that such mass resignation letters held no legal value.

On Saturday, more than 1,500 people marched from Salt Lake Karunamoyee to the CBI office at CGO Complex.

They said they did not believe that the rape and murder of the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital was the job of one man.

The CBI recently submitted its first chargesheet where it said that its probe so far had found the involvement of a lone man (Sanjay Roy) in the rape and murder. That arrest was made by Kolkata Police a day after the crime.

Saturday’s rally also demanded that the CBI reveal the motive behind the crime found in its probe.

Like other days, hundreds of people assembled outside the doctors’ protest site on the flank of Chowringee Road opposite Metro cinema. They raised slogans, sang songs and voiced their support for the doctors.

Eight junior doctors are on a fast unto death at the protest site in Esplanade.

Two doctors are on a fast at North Bengal Medical College and Hospital. Alok Varma, one of the two junior doctors on fast in North Bengal Medical College, took ill on Saturday and had to be admitted to hospital.

On Thursday, Aniket Mahata, a junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, was admitted to the critical care unit of RG Kar after he fell ill at the Esplanade protest site.

“I am feeling better today,” Aniket told this newspaper over the phone on Saturday evening. His father came to see him in the hospital on Saturday.

Two junior doctors —Parichay Panda, a junior doctor at Vivekananda Institute of Medical Sciences, and Alolika Ghorui, a junior doctor at Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital — joined the fast on Friday night.

“The health of all eight doctors on fast at Esplanade is stable,” a junior doctor at the protest site said on Saturday evening.

Bengal’s chief secretary Manoj Pant emailed the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front on Friday attaching a status report on various initiatives and interventions being done by the state government to improve the healthcare delivery system in the state.

Debashis Halder, a junior doctor at Medical College Kolkata and one of the faces of the doctors’ protest, said the government never spoke with them while undertaking the work.

“They never spoke with us. There is no notification. We are saying that patient services cannot be improved if there are fewer than the required number of doctors or other staff,” he said.

“We know that many of the things cannot be done quickly. We are only asking for a timeframe but the government has refused to give any timeframe,” said Halder.