MP arrests: Trinamool Congress to start 3-day protest rally from today

The country-wide protest march of Trinamool Congress against the arrest of its MPs after the party supremo Mamata Banerjee raised her voice against the arbitrary decision of the Modi government to demonetise high value notes will start on Monday for the next three days with party MLAs and senior leaders demonstrating outside Reserve Bank of India (RBI), CGO Complex at Salt Lake. Sources said that Banerjee would take part in the protest rally in front of RBI on January 11.

Soon after the arrest of Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay, the party supremo had announced that there will be a country-wide agitation against the atrocities of the Centre from January 9 to 11.

It may be mentioned that Banerjee had said that the arrests of Trinamool Congress MPs one after the other were an outcome of “vendetta politics of Modiji”. Despite of repeated alleged attempts to suppress her, Banerjee continued to fight against demonetisation that claimed more than 111 lives and led to a huge loss for the entire country. Her party is going to make the fight against the “dictatorship” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi stronger by holding protest rallies across the country.

Senior leaders of the party and MLAs will agitate in front of RBI protesting against the arrest of Bandyopadhyay and Tapas Paul. It is learnt that Sovan Chatterjee, the state fire minister, will lead the protest rally outside RBI.

The demonstration would start from 9 am and it will continue till 6 pm on all the three consecutive days at both RBI and CGO complex.

It may be recalled that Trinamool Congress MLAs had marched from State Assembly to RBI to protest against demonetisation a few weeks ago.

Sujit Bose, MLA from Bidhannagar Assembly constituency, will head the rally outside CGO complex where many other senior leaders of the party will be present.

At the same time, protest rallies in other states would also take place. Senior Trinamool Congress leaders including secretary general of the party, Partha Chatterjee, and Subrata Bakshi would lead the protest rally in Bhubaneswar. They left for Bhubaneswar on Sunday morning along with Chandrima Bhattacharya and Manish Gupta. They would meet Bandyopadhyay. MP Mukul Roy will take charge of the protest march in Punjab and Moloy Ghatak, the state labour minister, will be going to Dhanbad to organise protest rallies on January 10 and 11. A protest rally will also be organised in Tripura as well.

When the senior leaders will protest outside RBI, CGO complex and other states, the district, block and village level leaders and workers of Trinamool Congress will organise the same in their respective areas.

The party workers have also took out protest rallies in some parts of the state including Siliguri, Burdwan and North 24-Parganas. In Siliguri, a rally attended by thousands of people started from Baghajatin Park and ended at Air View More after passing through Hill Cart Road. Tourism Minister Goutam Deb led the rally. Similar protest rally took place near Curzon Gate in Burdwan.