West Bengal CM Mamata objects to letter from Haryana Police seeking verification of migrants
Addressing a press conference at the State Secretariat, Ms. Banerjee said that the Haryana Police had sent a letter seeking verification from District Magistrates and Superintendents of Police to verify the names of 52 migrants from the State.
Only a day before, on Monday, the Trinamool Congress chairperson had announced a 'language movement' in protest against the targeting of migrants from the State in BJP-ruled States for speaking in Bengali, at the party's annual Martyrs Day meeting in Kolkata.
'What do you want? to occupy West Bengal? There is a terrorism on language going on,' she remarked.
The development comes at a time when scores of migrant workers from West Bengal are being detained in several States, held for days on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals. The workers are forced to return to their homes.
'BJP is mistaken'
Asking the people from the State not to fear, Ms. Banerjee assured that her government would do all that was required.
'Just by indulging in such tactics, if the BJP thinks by deleting names of people from the voter list they can win West Bengal like [they did in] Delhi and Maharashtra, they are mistaken,' she said.
At the press conference, the Chief Minister added that a resident of Falakata in West Bengal, Anjali Seal, had received a notice from a Foreigners Tribunal located in Kokrajhar in Assam.
'If you think that you will run the country in this manner, the country will be divided. Once the country is divided, then unity will suffer. We want the country to remain united and strong,' Ms. Banerjee said at the State Secretariat. She advised Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to mind his own business and not to interfere in the issues of West Bengal.
New outreach scheme announced
The Chief Minister also announced a new initiative Amader Para, Amader Samadhan (Our locality, our solution), under which government officials will reach out to people across all localities.
'We are the first to take such an initiative in the country. Our officials will be present on the ground to listen to people's concerns. Each centre will cover three booths, effectively forming one unit for a particular locality,' Ms. Banerjee said. The outreach initiative will begin on August 2.
Ms. Banerjee added that since there were around 80,000 booths, it would take approximately two months to complete the entire programme.
She added that, under the programme, an amount of ₹10 lakh would be allocated for every booth, and that the State government would spend over ₹8,000 crore on this programme. The initiative is similar to the Duare Sarkar (Government at the doorstep) programme, which the State government had started in December 2020.
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