With hundreds behind, Mamata Banerjee marches against ‘harassment’ of Bengalis in other states

With hundreds of supporters following her, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday, July 16, hit the streets of Kolkata to protest the alleged “harassment” of Bengalis in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states. Many senior leaders of the Trinamool Congress, including TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee and Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim, joined Mamata Banerjee as she led thousands of people in the march.

The march started from College Square in central Kolkata around 1.45 pm and will continue for three kilometres. The march will terminate at Dorina Crossing in Dharmatala. As many as 1,500 police personnel have been assigned to guard the barricaded pavements and adjacent buildings.

Vehicular traffic was diverted on several key roads in central parts of the city due to the event. The protests are being held a day ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to the state.

With less than a year to go for the West Bengal Assembly elections, the TMC has intensified its attack, alleging a systematic pattern of linguistic profiling, arbitrary detentions, and efforts to label Bengali speakers as "illegal immigrants".

The protest also gave a glimpse of TMC's campaign ahead of the Assembly polls.

HOW BJP REACTED?

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”.

Taking a jibe at Mamata Banerjee, Suvendu Adhikari 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”.

"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.

(With agency inputs)