TMC takes out rallies across WB to protest against 'harassment' of Bengali-speaking migrants

    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.
    Meanwhile, countering the TMC's narrative, Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini said in a post on X: "West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee's sympathy toward those who breach the country's security is not only unfortunate but also against national interests. It is utterly deplorable that a chief minister, driven by appeasement and vote-bank politics, stoops so low as to compromise the country's security."
    "There is no place for Bangladeshi infiltrators in Haryana. They are being removed from the state as quickly as possible," Saini asserted, adding, "No compromise against India's unity, sovereignty and Constitution is acceptable in Haryana or anywhere in the country."
    Senior Bengal BJP leaders Suvendu Adhikari and Samik Bhattacharya accused the TMC of “shielding Bangladeshi infiltrators” in the name of protests over language for vote-bank politics.
    “Not a single legitimate citizen residing in West Bengal has been or are being targeted anywhere in India,” they maintained.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)