A massive gathering of people of the state’s tribal communities in Calcutta brought rush hour traffic on Friday morning in large parts of central and northern parts of the city to its knees.

Traffic remained at a standstill for significant durations on important thoroughfares starting from the city’s entry point at the Howrah Bridge and extended all the way up to the SSKM Hospital’s south side entrance adjacent to the Maidan in south and the Chittaranjan Avenue – Girish Park crossing in the north even as scores of Aadivasi protestors simultaneously poured into the city from trains reaching the terminating Howrah, Sealdah and Kolkata stations from early Friday morning.

The rally – organized by United Forum Of All Aadivasi Organizations, an umbrella body of close to 40 non-Kurmi tribal organizations – saw hundreds of people marching to the heart of the city on Rani Rashmoni Avenue in Esplanade, the venue of the protest meeting, converging in from different parts of the city.

Public commute in large parts of urban Howrah, all the way up to the Tikiapara railway station, was also severely affected.

Large scale traffic snarl on the Howrah Bridge on account of the aadivasi rally Telegraph picture

The protestors reached Calcutta from the central Bengal and Jungalmahal districts of Purulia, Bankura, Jhargram, Birbhum and West Midnapore. Tribal people from Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar also joined the protest demonstration in the city.

According to information shared by the city’s traffic police on its verified X handle, some of the most affected city roads included the Howrah Bridge and its adjacent Stand Road and Mahatma Gandhi Road on the eastern flank of the Hooghly River. The traffic snarl then extended up to the arterial thoroughfares like the Chittaranjan Avenue, Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Ganesh Chandra Avenue, Lenin Sarani, SN Banerjee Road, BB Ganguly Street, Red Road, Mayo Road, Park Street, AJC Bose Road and the Dorina Crossing at Esplanade.

The rally, on the other hand, was held to primarily protest against the long and sustaining demand of the Kurmis, who currently hold OBC status, to be recognized as Scheduled Tribes. The rally aims to “protest against the conspiracy of Kshatriya Kurmi-Mahatos to gain ST status by means of distorting tribal history and securing political patronage. It also demands cancellation of fake ST certificates issued to non-tribals,” a poster of the Forum citing the primary agenda of the day’s protest programme, read.

The Kurmi’s, on the other hand, had called for an indefinite blockade of one of the National Highways in the state and railway tracks in Bankura, Purulia and Jhargram as part of its attempts to renew its demand for ST status on September 20. The programme was called off after the Calcutta High Court declared the proposed programme illegal and barred the protestors from going ahead with the agitation. Earlier, Kurmis had similar protests in the state and some even turned violent. Ahead of the Panchayat polls, a section of Kurmi activists had allegedly carried out an attack on the convoy of Trinamul Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee in Salboni, West Midnapore, when the politician had gone there to participate in the party’s Naba Jowar mass outreach campaign.

Among the other demands of the Friday rally of the aadivasis in Calcutta was the scrapping of the proposed Uniform Civil Code Bill which, the protestors maintained, would destroy the country’s multi-ethnic foundation. The Forum also opposed the Bengal government’s endeavour to set up open cast coal mines at Birbhum’s Deucha Pachami on tribal land and protested atrocities committed on women in Manipur and in different parts of Bengal.

The agitating members of the tribal community in Calcutta also demanded the scrapping of the controversial Forest Preservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023 which seeks to restrict the conservation scope of the Act to only certain forest lands and currently awaits a debate in Rajya Sabha after it was passed by the Lok Sabha in June. Instead, the protestors demanded effective implementation of the Forest Rights Act of 2006.