A meeting between protesting junior doctors and the government on Wednesday night failed to break the impasse.

Bengal’s chief secretary Manoj Pant emailed the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front at 6.30pm inviting them to a meeting with the state task force headed by him.

The meeting was supposed to start at 7.45pm but it started past 9.30pm.

The meeting continued for over two-and-a-halfhours. After coming out, the junior doctors said they did not get anything positivefrom the meeting. “The state government only gave verbal assurances,” a doctor said.

“They refused to say when our demands could be met. We know it will take some time. We only asked for a deadline, which they refused to give. They did not want to discuss our demand for the health secretary’s resignation,” Debashis Halder, one of the doctors who attended the meeting, said.

“We wanted them to tell us when students’ union elections or elections for resident doctors’ associations could be held…. The government did not give any timeline,” Halder said.

Another junior doctor said there was nothing in the meeting that could end the hunger strike.

“It was a charade,” said Amrita Bhattacharya, one of the doctors who attended the meeting.

Home secretary Nandini Chakravarty and state’s director general of police, Rajeev Kumar, both members of the task force, had reached Swasthya Bhavan for the meeting.

“You may bring a delegation of 8-10 members for the above meeting,” the email from the chief secretary had said.

The junior doctors held a meeting among themselves after receiving the mail. Later, a team of around 30 junior doctors left for SwasthaBhavan. None of the junior doctors who are on a fast till death at Esplanade was in the team.

Before leaving for the meeting, the protesters said they were going keeping in mind the health of the fasting doctors.

“We are going to the meeting to tell the officials clearly what our demands are. None of the demands is new,” Halder had said before leaving for the meeting.

“We are going to the meeting keeping in mind the health of those on fast till death.”

Arnab Mukherjee, a junior doctor at SSKM Hospitalwho is fasting at Esplanade, said he was urging those who were going to the meeting not to feel weakened thinking about the health of the doctors on fast.

“We are firm and we want the government to meetall our demands,” said Mukherjee.