Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday sent her party’s new Rajya Sabha member Samirul Islam to Haryana’s Nuh district, where communal riots had broken out on July 31, to offer succour to migrant workers “spending sleepless nights” and other affected people.

After spending several hours in the area and speaking to people to take stock of the situation in the BJP-ruled state, Samirul said: “I came to Nuh following an instruction from our chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is really concerned about the plight of the migrant labourers, especially Muslims, who are spending sleepless nights.... The migrant community is still in panic. Through me they sent a request to the chief minister urging her to stand by them.”

Samirul, who chairs the West Bengal Migrant Workers’ Welfare Board, said he visited multiple places in Nuh, meeting local people and migrant workers from various states.

He will submit a detailed report to Mamata shortly after his return from Delhi after taking oath on August 21 in the Upper House.

Communal violence broke out in Nuh on July 31 when Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal activists took out a procession through a sensitive area after an objectionable video posted on social media by a Bajrang Dal activist surfaced.

Strife spread to adjoining areas, including Gurgaon.

A source in Trinamul said that sending Samirul to Nuh was part of a larger strategy of Mamata, an integral part of the Opposition’s INDIA coalition, to send out a message to the minority communities that the alliance can save India’s secular fabric that the BJP is trying to rip apart.

“She had also sent a team to Manipur where the minority Kuki-Zo community had been facing atrocities since May this year. Now she has sent her representative to Nuh. All these are part of her plan to corner the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls,” said a Trinamul leader.

A source in Trinamul said Mamata’s decision to focus on the Muslims in Nuh assumed heightened significance amid a discourse on how the saffron ecosystem was betraying Muslims who stayed back in India instead of migrating to Pakistan after an assurance from Mahatma Gandhi.

Historian Sugata Bose on Thursday pointed to the significance of Muslims in Nuh at a programme in Calcutta’s Dhana Dhanya stadium.

“It was on Mahatma Gandhi’s assurance that Muslims of that region (Haryana’s Nuh) stayed back in India, instead of migrating to Pakistan. We have failed to keep the promise made by Gandhiji,” said Bose, the Gardiner Professor of History at Harvard University and the grand-nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

Samirul said he met at least 100 people, including Muslim clerics.

Md Tahir, a 35-year-old transporter in Nuh’s Tauru, told this newspaper over the phone that people wanted “Didi” to intervene and restore communal harmony in their area.

“I request Mamata Didi, who stands for communal harmony, to be with us in restoring peace here. Both governments (the Haryana state government and the Centre) should understand that we are Indians, not outsiders. We want a peaceful life,” said Tahir.