Kolkata, Nov 20 (IANS): Infighting within the ruling Trinamool Congress again erupted over the key chair in West Bengal Medical Council after the incumbent president and party legislator Sudipto Roy urged the Health & Family Welfare Department to remove former party Rajya Sabha member Santanu Sen as a state- government nominated member of the council.

Both Roy and Sen are medical practitioners. Roy has said that Sen should be removed from that chair because of his absence in six consecutive meetings of the council on January 1 2024 without proper reason and hence should be deemed to have vacated the post.

Roy also pointed out that a member of the council should be deemed to have vacated the chair if he is absent without reason sufficient in the opinion of the council from three consecutive meetings of the council.

Roy has also requested the Health Secretary that the state should nominate a suitable representative in place of Sen under the provisions of certain sections of the Bengal Medical Act, 1914.

Meanwhile, Sen said that since he was nominated to the council by the state government he is only answerable to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who is also the Health Minister.

“I will talk to the media persons about the letter to the Health Secretary,” Sen said.

Since the rape and murder of a female junior doctor of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata in August this year, Sen has become vocal against a section of the state healthcare system of the state. Things worsened further over the central agency probe on the financial irregularities at R.G. Kar, as a part of which the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials conducted raid and search operations at the residence and hospital of Roy in North Kolkata and also questioned him at the central agency office.