Mamata leads protest march in Kolkata over 'harassment' of Bengali-speaking people in other states

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee hit the streets of Kolkata on Wednesday afternoon to protest the alleged harassment of Bengali-speaking people in BJP-ruled states. Senior leaders of the party, including TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, joined Banerjee as she led thousands of people in the march, which began from College Square in central Kolkata around 1.45 pm. The march will terminate at Dorina Crossing in Dharmatala.

The nearly 3-km route was wrapped in security, with nearly 1,500 police personnel guarding the barricaded pavements and adjacent buildings. Vehicular traffic was diverted along multiple arterial roads in the central parts of the city because of the programme. Similar demonstrations have also been organised by the TMC in the district headquarter towns across the state. The protests are being held a day ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to the state. With less than a year left for the assembly elections in West Bengal, the TMC is raising its pitch over what it alleges is a systematic pattern of linguistic profiling, unlawful detentions, and attempts to brand Bengali speakers as "illegal immigrants". The TMC usually refrains from holding major public events in the run-up to its annual Shahid Dibas rally on July 21. But the series of recent incidents, including the detention of migrant workers in Odisha, eviction drives in Delhi, and a notice served to a farmer in Cooch Behar by a foreigners' tribunal in Assam, appears to have compelled the party to shift gears.

The protests also give a glimpse of the thrust of TMC's campaign for the assembly elections, which will be due mid-next year. The party seems to be betting heavily on rekindling the emotional connection with voters through a campaign that blends identity politics with grassroots mobilisation. Countering Banerjee's emotive pitch of Bengali pride, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari alleged that the whole exercise of "Bengali asmita" is being flaunted to shield the presence of "Bengali-speaking Rohingyas and illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators". Adhikari took a dig at the chief minister and asked why she has turned a "deaf ear to the cries of exasperation of thousands of Bengali-speaking teachers in the state who lost their jobs" on account of institutional corruption. Referring to Banerjee’s appointments to the top administrative and police posts in the state, Adhikari asked, "Why were Atri Bhattacharya and Subrata Gupta, two Bengali officers, denied the position of state chief secretary and offered to Manoj Pant, despite the latter being junior to the former two bureaucrats?" "Why was the senior-most IPS officer Sanjay Mukhopadhyay ignored for the position of DGP where an out-of-state junior, Rajiv Kumar, was posted?" he asked in a post on X. Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim, who took part in the protest rally, said he wasn't ready to attach too much importance to those allegations. "Adhikari is saying such things to please his bosses in Delhi. His tactic will not work here," he said.