Bengal Assembly likely to hold special session over 'harassment' of Bengalis
BJP-ruled states
.
The session is likely to focus on two major issues: the alleged targeted attack on Bengali- speaking migrant workers in several states and the labelling of Bengali-speaking migrants as "Bangladeshis". A formal resolution may be introduced for a discussion during the session. The special session of the assembly may be held between August 8 and 21, people in the know said.
Explore courses from Top Institutes in
Please select course:
Select a Course Category
Project Management
Degree
CXO
Design Thinking
Leadership
Finance
Healthcare
healthcare
PGDM
MCA
Management
Technology
Public Policy
Others
Data Science
Product Management
MBA
Digital Marketing
Data Analytics
Artificial Intelligence
Data Science
Operations Management
others
Cybersecurity
Skills you'll gain:
Portfolio Management
Project Planning & Risk Analysis
Strategic Project/Portfolio Selection
Adaptive & Agile Project Management
Duration:
6 Months
IIT Delhi
Certificate Programme in Project Management
Starts on
May 30, 2024
Get Details
Skills you'll gain:
Project Planning & Governance
Agile Software Development Practices
Project Management Tools & Software Techniques
Scrum Framework
Duration:
12 Weeks
Indian School of Business
Certificate Programme in IT Project Management
Starts on
Jun 20, 2024
Get Details
According to sources, a preliminary discussion has been undertaken with the ruling legislative party on this matter, although a final decision is yet to be taken. "The proposal for the special session is likely to be placed by the state Parliamentary Affairs Department at the office of the Speaker Biman Bandopadhyay, after the details in the matter gets finalised," sources said.
The move comes following a massive Martyr's Day rally held on Monday during which West Bengal CM
Mamata Banerjee
kindled the 'Bengali Asmita' spirit and called for a second 'Bhasha Andolon' (language movement) in Bengal ahead of the 2026 polls.
Banerjee had said that she will not tolerate "linguistic terrorism" and asserted that the fight for
Bengali identity and language
will continue. While addressing the Martyr's Day in Kolkata yesterday, Banerjee has said that if Bengali-speaking migrants are arrested in various states, the protest will move to New Delhi. She also announced her party will launch protest programmes on this issue, which will be the 'second Language' movement, across the state starting July 27. Trinamool MPs have protested on the issue in Parliament today.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
11 minutes ago
- Indian Express
In slums near upscale Gurugram housing societies, no city for Bengali migrants doing odd jobs
On a rainy afternoon, 36-year-old Sanju Bibi's one-room shanty, located in a slum behind DPS International School in Gurugram, is filled with the aroma of the chicken curry she is making for her husband, who works as a tiler, and herself. Till mid-July — around the time that hundreds of Bengali migrants from this slum started rushing back to their villages — Sanju, a resident of West Bengal's Malda, worked as a cook in several houses in the nearby upscale housing societies. In May, the Union Home Ministry had issued a letter directing states to prepare a standard operating procedure (SOP) to deport 'in sufficient numbers' Bangladeshis and Rohingya found staying in India illegally. '… if any illegal foreign national is found living in any state/district, he will be detained and kept in a Special Holding Centre… the police is conducting special search operations for illegal foreign nationals to maintain law and order and peace in district Gurugram,' reads a July 22 District Magistrate order. The fear among Gurugram's Bengali-speaking migrant community at present is reminiscent of the situation two years ago, in the aftermath of the violence in Nuh that had spilled over to Gurugram. In a bid to encourage slum residents 'to carry on with their daily activities without fear', Gurugram Deputy Commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav had visited slums near Sectors 58 and 70 recently. On their part, the Gurugram police had on July 26 issued a statement that they were only rounding up 'confirmed Bangladeshis' as part of their verification drive ever since four of their facilities to house suspected foreigners — community centres in Badshahpur, Sector 10A, Sector 40, and Sector 1 in Manesar — had shut down on July 25. To a question on why these detention centres had shut down, a Gurugram police spokesperson said, 'We shut them down since we have completed the verification of suspected foreigners. Earlier too, only those who either did not have certain papers, had papers with discrepancies, had Bangladeshi numbers on their phone or had deleted WhatsApp from their phones were taken to the holding centres.' Back at the slum behind the school, even though Sanju's two daughters are back home in Malda since the beginning of the academic year and her husband was 'fortunate enough' to not get picked up by the police — 'unlike many other Bengali Muslims from the slum' — she says they plan to go back to West Bengal as soon as they get their July wages. Pointing to a slim black bag containing, among other documents, her family's Aadhaar cards and voter IDs, Sanju says, 'My parents lived with us too, but left for Malda after the detentions started. We both will get our police verification done in Malda and, hopefully, return to Gurugram within a month.' Though she has not gone to work since July 19, Sanju counts her husband and herself 'lucky' because the Gurugram police considered their Aadhaar cards as proof of nationality. And yet, her fear is palpable: 'Darr ka mahaul hain tabse, tabhi toh koi nahin ruka hain yahan (Everyone is scared since the detentions started, which is why many have left).' With Sanju staying indoors since mid-July, the loss of income has hit the couple hard. 'We pay Rs 5,000 each for our two daughters, who are in a hostel in Malda. We are struggling to cobble together Rs 10,000 for their hostel fee this time. If four of my employers come through (and pay her a total of Rs 18,000), we might manage this month. But there are no jobs back in the village. The residents there live on free ration and sleep all day.' Besides the worry over her daughters' future, she has been dreading surprise verification checks. 'My husband and I haven't had a decent night's sleep since mid-July. We keep expecting someone to come knocking, asking for proof of nationality.' A few doors down in the same settlement, Mehbooba Yasmeen, 30, also from Malda district, has stayed back only because she is in the final stages of her pregnancy. A cook until recently, she cleaned houses and took care of toddlers before she got pregnant. 'The trains are too crowded for me to travel home safely right now. My husband, who works as a staffer in a nearby small cafe, is out working all day. I feel scared the entire time he is away.' Calling the current situation 'worse than COVID', Mehbooba adds, 'My employers are scared to ask me to come to work. Even a trip to the (common) toilet here is full of fear. I am forever on the lookout for the CIA (Crime Investigation Agency of the Haryana Police).' According to the locals, this special police unit has been picking them up on the suspicion that they are Bangladeshis or Rohingyas, not Indians. Sanju and Mehbooba said only a handful of their neighbours are migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Rajiv, a Class 5 student from Bihar, has a different take on this exodus. 'All my friends here (in the slum) were Bengalis. They got scared and left (after the detentions). I don't have anyone to play with now,' he says. 'I am confident they are Indians and not Bangladeshis.' Around 10 km from DPS International School, at Chakkarpur's Yadav Chaupal area in Sector 28 of Gurugram, The Indian Express was either greeted by locked shanties or wary families preferring to stay indoors all day. Sitting in her one-room jhuggi, Chavi Bibi, 30, a domestic worker, points to her daughter, 12, who is lying in bed with her smartphone. Her son, a student of Class 6, currently stays with his grandmother in a shanty in the lane over. 'She has not gone to school since July 20, after her father (a contract labourer) was picked up by the police from his jhuggi while he was taking a post-lunch nap,' she says, recalling the July 20 incident. Detained on July 20, Chavi's husband Adam Ali, 37, returned home only late on July 22. She said working in a kothi when she received a call from Adam around 3 pm on July 20, informing her that he had been detained by the police. 'Humko laga mazaak kar rahein hain. Aadat hai unki (I thought he was joking. He's a prankster). But when I got home, he was not around. Tension toh hoga na, agar gharwaale ko leke jaayega (a husband's detention will cause tension).' Originally from West Bengal's Uttar Dinajpur district, the family moved to Gurugram a decade ago in search of better jobs. Claiming that most of her neighbours, her father and brother left for West Bengal earlier in July, she adds, 'If the situation escalates, we will have no option but to go back. There are no jobs back at home. I don't know how we will earn enough to send our two children to school.' Her eyes still glued to the smartphone, Chavi's daughter declares suddenly, 'Basti waalon ne bola, 'Papa aane ke baad meri muskaan badal gayi hai (Locals said my smile has changed ever since Papa came back)'.' Once back home, she said Adam told her that he had been taken to multiple places during his detention. 'Instead of checking his Aadhaar card, he told me that they snatched it and put it in their pocket,' she claims. According to Chavi, Adam was first taken to the Sector 29 police station, followed by the Sector 30 community centre and then the Sector 40 community centre, from where he was finally released late at night. 'We had no contact with him after his call at 3 pm on July 20. On July 22, he called me from someone's phone (from the Sector 40 community centre), asking him to pick him up. Then, a police officer took the phone and quietly instructed us not to call back on that number,' she claims. After her husband's return home, Chavi says her in-laws submitted various documents as proof of Adam's Indian citizenship, including his voter ID, ration card, their own photographs, etc., at a local police station in Uttar Dinajpur district. 'After that, the local police station coordinated with the Gurugram police, who made Adam fill up a form. We have made multiple rounds of the police station since. Our family has been urging us to come back home but there are no jobs in the village,' says Chavi. Glancing at her daughter anxiously, she whispers, 'Abhi toh sun rahe hain ki mahilaon aur bacchon ko bhi pakad ke le jaa rahe hai (we are hearing whispers of women and children being detained now).' However, the police denied these allegations. Pointing to a plastic bag with bitter gourds suspended from the bamboo rafters of her shanty, she says they finally bought vegetables nearly a week after he was detained. 'While Adam was detained, I lost my appetite. Our daughter would cry when asked to eat. How could we eat not knowing if he (Adam) was getting food or not?' says Chavi, staring at the bitter gourds. What did not change for the family during Adam's detention was the fact that Chavi still had to go to work. 'I had already taken a four-day leave earlier. My employers said they would dock my pay if I took more leave.'
Indian Express
11 minutes ago
- Indian Express
NDA MLAs on edge, Yogi Adityanath takes steps to remove friction with officials
WITH several ministers in his government as well as ruling BJP MPs and MLAs going vocal about lack of cooperation from officials in their regions, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has taken matters in his own hands. On Friday, The Indian Express reported Energy Minister A K Sharma's outbursts against his department's employees, who have been holding protests over plans to privatise power distribution in the state and seeking his removal. On Sunday July 27, Adityanath held a development review of Kanpur, Chitrakoot and Jhansi divisions at his official residence, where MPs and MLAs of the area as well as officials were present. The message was that the officials should keep public representatives in the loop on development projects and schemes in their regions. A similar meeting was held for the Lucknow division on July 30, with such 'Mandalwar Samwad' planned for regions across the state in the coming days. Sources say that while friction between legislators and officials in the state has been building for about two years – since the BJP returned to power, and Adityanath became CM again – voices are growing now because of the forthcoming panchayat elections, followed by the Assembly polls in 2027. Pointing to 'all-powerful' officials under the Adityanath government, a BJP MLA said: 'They act on whim, without regard to public representatives or protocol. We are answerable to the public, but we often find ourselves helpless when we take up their issues, such as road repairs, electricity connection restoration, or land records correction. When we approach senior leaders or ministers, they also throw up their hands.' The MLA added that they were waiting to see the results of the exercise started by the CM to get public representatives and officials together. Ministers have complained about being equally helpless before officials of their department. In a post on his office's X account, Energy Minister A K Sharma recently wrote: 'Officers have completely stopped answering phones. The situation was already bad, and now it has worsened.' He uploaded an audio clip of a conversation between a power consumer and an official of his department to make his point. Last week, Minister of State for Women and Child Welfare Pratibha Shukla staged a sit-in against Kanpur Police, alleging that her supporters were being 'targeted' unfairly. Shukla is an MLA from Akbarpur-Rania in Kanpur Dehat. Before that, the contents of a letter by Minister for Infrastructure and Industries Nand Gopal Gupta 'Nandi' to the CM had gone viral, where he accused officials in his department of not following directives 'for over two years', as well as acting arbitrarily and showing preferential treatment to some. Sources told The Indian Express that Nandi wrote the letter after failing to get a response on several complaints made by him against officials, or seeing any action against them. Before Nandi, Technical Education Minister Ashish Patel, who belongs to NDA ally Apna Dal (S), alleged at a party meeting that officials in his department were using government funds to defame the Apna Dal (S). Officials, for their part, talk of undue pressure from public representatives. A member of the Secretariat employees' union told The Indian Express: 'Soon after he took charge, the CM publicly told officials to not be afraid of anything and to work without pressure… Over time, it has become a problem for public representatives who have been used to getting their work done… At the same time, officials too need to be respected… There has to be a balance from both sides, and the CM is trying to ensure this now.' At the meetings held recently by Adityanath, the CM urged the NDA MPs and MLAs to share their concerns and suggest projects that they felt were significant for their constituencies, and told the officers to prepare a report on the suggestions made. One point stressed by Adityanath was that the names of local representatives be prominently displayed on foundation or inauguration plaques set up for projects. The CM said that the MPs and MLAs should then act as watchdogs of these government schemes and monitor them. A senior official present at one of these meetings said: 'The CM took feedback from MLAs and MPs on the situation in their constituencies, as well as the administrative coordination and public expectations.' Among the projects proposed by MLAs were those dealing with road connectivity, logistics hubs, approach roads to religious places, and irrigation. An MLA who attended the July 27 meeting said: 'Instructions were given by the CM on the spot depending on issues raised by the public representatives. It is a healthy exercise… We hope things will change on the ground as well.' At the end of Sunday's meeting, Rs 4,901 crore worth of projects were finalised for the Jhansi division, Rs 3,875 crore worth of projects for Chitrakoot division, and about Rs 10,914 crore worth of projects for Kanpur. MoS Pratibha Shukla, who protested against police in her area recently, said things were taking a turn. 'Yogi ji has sorted things,' she told The Indian Express. 'He listened to us and also instructed officials to listen to our grievances. Both the DM and SDM of our district have been changed… We are hopeful things will change on the ground too.'
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
11 minutes ago
- Business Standard
PM to inaugurate Bengaluru's Yellow Line Metro on Aug 10: Tejasvi Surya
BJP leader Tejasvi Surya on Sunday announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Yellow Line Metro Rail on August 10. In a post on X', the Bengaluru South MP said, PM Sri @narendramodi Ji will inaugurate the all important Yellow Line metro on August 10. On behalf of all people of Bengaluru, I thank PM for always prioritising infrastructure development of our city." The Yellow Line is expected to benefit nearly eight lakh commuters and ease traffic congestion in key areas, including the notorious Silk Board junction. According to Surya, pubic transport is the only long-term solution to Bengaluru's traffic woes. With the August 10 inauguration, the Metro project would meet the August 15 deadline. He credited the timely launch to Modi's personal push to ensure that the line is open to public without any further delay. Surya, who is also the BJYM national president, quoted Union Urban Affairs Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, who said on X', I am pleased to announce that the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India has kindly agreed to inaugurate 19.15 km Yellow Line from RV Road to Bommasandra of Bangaluru metro with 16 stations at the cost of Rs 5,056.99 crore and lay the foundation stone of 44.65 km of Bangalore phase-3 at the cost of Rs 15,611 Crore on 10th August 2025. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
