Kolkata, Jul 27 (PTI) Leaders and activists of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Sunday took out rallies across West Bengal to protest against alleged atrocities on Bengali-speaking migrant workers in BJP-ruled states.
Marches were organised in Bhawanipore and Sealdah in the city and elsewhere in Chuchura, Bankura, Birbhum, Coochbehar by the TMC activists, who held placards highlighting “harassment and persecution” of the migrant workers in Assam, Odisha, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan and Maharashtra by the police in those states.
TMC MLA Asim Majumdar led the rally at Khadina More in Chuchura, where he asserted that the “double-engine governments” in those BJP-ruled states were “deliberately harassing” Bengali-speaking migrants despite producing documents like Aadhaar cards and Voter ID cards.
Majumdar claimed that the labourers were taken to camps, where they were beaten up and pressurised to admit being Bangladeshi nationals.
“As stated by our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, we have started this ‘language movement’ from today, which will hit the streets every weekend till the middle of August in the run-up to Independence Day. We will not take the persecution of Bengalis lightly,” he asserted.
TMC leader and North Bengal Development Minister Udayan Guha led another march at Dinhata in Coochbehar, vowing to resist the “attempt by the BJP to strike off names of legitimate voters from voter lists, and send Indian citizens from Bengal to detention camps for electoral gains”.
Thousands of TMC activists took part in the rallies in Sealdah and Bhawanipore with placards displaying Bengali alphabets and slogans against “torture on Bengali-speaking people by the BJP outside West Bengal” The processions disrupted vehicular movement in parts of central and south Kolkata.
Banerjee, who is also the TMC supremo, had earlier in the week accused the BJP of unleashing “linguistic terrorism” on Bengalis, asserting that the fight for identity and language will continue until the saffron party is defeated. PTI SUS RBT
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