A Trinamul Congress MLA opened a control room to help the return of migrant workers stranded outside Bengal, a day after the leadership had asked all party legislators to alleviate the labourers’ sufferings.
Goghat MLA Manas Majumder who opened the control room at Kamarpukur was just one of many Trinamul MLAs and senior leaders in various districts who fielded party workers to collect the data of migrant workers from their respective areas.
“A large number of people don’t know how to apply online for the entry passes to Bengal and most of them have no idea about it. The state government is doing a lot for all of them, but we need to focus on the families too. So, I opened the control room where anyone can come and register,” said Majumdar.
“We are sending all the names and details to the state government for the arrangement of their smooth return,” he added.
Sources have said there are lakhs of migrant workers from Murshidabad, Malda, Birbhum, Hooghly and Bankura, who look for employment in at least a dozen states regularly for work as masons, farm labourers or in factories.
Trinamul insiders said the BJP had been successful in creating a narrative that the state government did not show enough interest in bringing back stranded migrants.
On Sunday, senior Trinamul leaders, along with poll consultant Prashant Kishor, met the party MLAs for over three hours through videoconference and told them to start a mass campaign from Wednesday against the BJP’s “malicious propaganda”.
Junior public health engineering minister Shyamal Santra, the Bishnupur MLA, said a political game, allegedly initiated by the BJP, was unfolding in Bengal over the migrant workers.
“It is very important to stop it immediately as the state government has always been sympathetic towards them. Our party workers are collecting data from the ground and processing them for the administration,” said Santra. Trinamul’s Hariharpara MLA Niyamat Sheikh virtually echoed him.
Senior Trinamul leader and mentor of the Bankura zilla parishad Arup Chakraborty has sent money to at least 250 migrant workers stuck in various parts of the country.
Trinamul leaders said migrant workers and their families were a reliable vote bank of the party, which the BJP is trying to erode.
Migrant workers stuck in other states have been mentioning that local police have been saying that the Bengal government has not made arrangements for them.
A group of around 200 migrants workers stuck in Gujarat’s Surat purportedly experienced this first hand. “We repeatedly visited the local police station and government office there, they told us that our government in Bengal was not working towards taking us back,” said Mohammed Asraf, a migrant worker from East Burdwan’s Ketugram.
Additional reporting by Alamgir Hossain in Behrampore