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Time of India
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
It's 58-yr-old Cooch Behar woman's turn to get NRC notice from Assam
1 2 Jalpaiguri: Yet another Cooch Behar resident has received an NRC notice from the Assam Foreigners' Tribunal. Mamina Bibi, a resident of Salbari in Tufanganj-II, along the Bengal-Assam border, has been asked to appear before the tribunal with her documents. Issued on Sept 1, 2024, the notice was handed over to 58-year-old Bibi at her home by officers from Tufanganj police station on Wednesday. Bibi was married to Azimuddin Miyan, an Assamese man from Dhubri's Agomani, 40 years ago. After living there for a year, she moved to Salbari. Her husband gave her talaq after having his second son, and Bibi has been living with her two sons since then. You Can Also Check: Kolkata AQI | Weather in Kolkata | Bank Holidays in Kolkata | Public Holidays in Kolkata "I have never voted in Assam. My name is registered in Bengal voters' list. I don't know why I was served a notice," Bibi said. The notice shows the case against her was lodged in 2019. As the news spread, the Cooch Behar Trinamool leadership, led by district president Avijit De Bhowmik, visited Bibi at her house on Thursday. "We have asked her not to respond to the notice and not to worry as well. Our party and govt is with every such Bengali-speaking person who is targeted in Assam," Bhowmik said. Citing an Assam govt notification dated this Feb, where it recognised people from Koch-Rajbanshi community as indigenous people of Assam, BJP accused TMC of trying to play with the sentiments of Bengalis. "When Assam govt has notified all Koch-Rajbanshi people as indigenous people, TMC's effort to convince people on this is just dirty politics to safeguard illegal Bangladeshis living here and vote for them," said Avijit Barman, BJP's Cooch Behar president. Earlier, the Assam govt identified Uttam Kumar Brajabashi as an illegal immigrant residing in Dinhata. Septuagenarian Nishikanta Das, a resident of Mathabhanga, was also served an NRC notice. Although Das appeared at the hearing and produced an Aadhaar card, EPIC and ration card, the tribunal rejected those as residential evidence. Another Tufanganj resident, Arati Ghosh, left Assam even before she was served a notice. She claimed that as she did not have documents that the Assam govt was looking for, she returned to her ancestral house in Baxirhat. There are 15 seats reserved for SCs in Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur, mostly because of the Rajbanshi population.
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Hindustan Times
Caught between identity, survival: Tale of a Gurugram exodus
For Rashida Bibi, Fridays are virtually luxurious. That day, one of the families she works for gives her a weekly break, another makes work trips to Delhi so they leave early, and a third hosts an event so they hire specialised staff. That means instead of 5.30am, she wakes up at a leisurely 8am. Her sore muscles are allowed some rest, her chai simmers longer, and her trip to the market is more of a canter and not the usual dash. The only people who grudge her Fridays are her two children, aged eight and five, who spend a tense morning under the watchful eyes of a mother anxious about their progress in school. Over the past week, nearly 1,000 families of Bengali-speaking migrant workers have packed up and left Gurugram in hired trucks and buses.(HT Photo) Last Friday, though, was anything but languid. Crouched on the floor of her shanty made of corrugated tin sheets held aloft by sticks of bamboo, Bibi sorted her family's meagre belongings into essential and disposable. Stained sheets, sarees, and her husband's lungis and shirts in one steel box, the children's books and documents into the almost new suitcase her employers gave her last year, and pots and pans she had painstakingly collected over the years into a makeshift tarp bundle. Some plastic buckets, a stack of dented plates, and a crumpled towel didn't make the cut. 'Maybe if we come back..' her voice trailed off. The migrant worker from Bengal's Murshidabad district wasn't alone. Over the past week, nearly 1,000 families of Bengali-speaking migrant workers have packed up and left Gurugram in hired trucks and buses, spooked by the city police's drive targeting undocumented immigrants. The administration has said that they are targeting undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants – part of a wider national drive across multiple states – but migrant workers allege that the opaque process has triggered anxiety and fear among poor Bengali-speaking people, forcing them to abandon their posts as sanitation workers, domestic helps, cooks, guards, and auto and rickshaw drivers. Moreover, the demand for papers beyond the usual Aadhaar or voter identity cards has caused consternation. 'This is what the government asks us to have every time. How will I get more papers? Where is the time?' Bibi asked. Rush to flee crackdown In a narrow lane behind the glittering towers of Sector 69 in Gurugram, a worn-out truck stood idling last Friday morning. Around it, families stuffed their belongings— rolled mattresses, plastic buckets, bags of clothes, battered utensils — into the open container. Aisha Khatun tried to keep her crying children calm as they clung to her kurta, begging not to leave their school and friends. 'We came here to earn with dignity,' said Khatun, a domestic worker who had lived here for three years. 'Now we are being treated like criminals. I am scared every time I hear a knock at the door. My neighbour told me the police took her husband without any notice.' In her neighbourhood, each family paid ₹25,000 to ₹30,000 to arrange their return, a bulk of it spent on transport and emergency expenses. This included truck rentals, fuel, agents, and basic provisions. 'All the money we had saved in three years was spent in a single night,' said Shabana Parveen, a resident of slums near Sector 57. 'We didn't even get our salary since we left without any notice. Our employer said they will transfer it later on UPI, but I don't even have a phone. I gave them my cousin's number.' A sudden, opaque process, say migrants The Gurugram Police drive began around July 7, in line with several similar such initiatives across the country, including in Delhi. Gurugram Police public relations officer Sandeep Kumar said the trigger was concerns about undocumented people. He also clarified that basic medical assistance and food were provided. 'There was a team assigned, but no critical medical issue arose,' he said. He added that out of over 250 picked up, only 10 were found to be actual undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. 'All others were released after cross-verification. Everything was done under CCTV monitoring. No formal complaint of harassment was received,' he added. A senior police official blamed the panic on old videos. 'Gurugram Police have not beaten up or harasses anybody. We are just verifying the identity of migrants, and only those with no valid legal documents were detained earlier. We have reached out to the RWAs to help us in spreading awareness,' the official said. But migrant workers complain that the process was sudden and opaque, and complicated by the police's refusal to accept documents such as Aadhaar or voter IDs. 'They checked our documents and said that they have to confirm with some central list,' said Khatun. Rahim Sheikh from Badshahpur, who worked as a security guard, alleged he was detained for three days before being released. 'We were taken without notice. My wife kept waiting. I had no way to inform her. It was terrifying. We got food, but we didn't know if we would ever get out.' Nazma Sultana, a house help from Sector 46, said her husband was picked up but released later. 'He was scared out of his wits. We decided not to wait for another shock. We sold our fridge and fan to pay the truck guy.' The police said four community centres in Sector 10A, Badshapur, Sector 40 and Manesar were turned into temporary detention centres, but added that given the fear, they were changing their approach. 'We understand emotions are involved, and based on feedback, we have decided to alter our approach. Now, verification will be done locally at police beats, not at detention centres,' Kumar said. The city's underbelly People like Bibi, Khatun and Sheikh form a 400 million strong pool of internal migrants who travel from under-developed sinks in rural Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh to megacities such as Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Chennai or Hyderabad. Informal networks of kinship make this possible – Bibi, for example, came to Gurugram four years ago following the footsteps of her husband and his elder brother, who has since moved to Hyderabad. In India's metropolises that thrive on a vast but informal underbelly of civic services, migrants plug important gaps by serving in a wide range of professions. The compact might be uneasy - it took Bibi's family almost a year to occupy a permanent shanty – but it is rewarding. 'In my village, I would just be cooking and tilling someone else's fields. Here I was earning almost ₹30,000,' she said. But the recent drive upset this balance, triggering fear that the mere sound of unfamiliar or unpolished Bengali was enough to trigger suspicion. 'We started getting calls that people were being detained and sent to jail. They said there would be no bail,' said Jamal Mondal, who lived in Sector 55. 'I called a relative in Kolkata who helped arrange a truck. 45 of us left the next day.' Abdul Karim, a truck driver from Kolkata who came to deliver goods in Manesar, said he was hired by the families to ferry them back. 'They begged me with tears in their eyes. I took two full trucks of families back. The kids cried the whole way.' Mohammad Rafiq, another driver from Howrah, said he came to Gurugram to deliver marble. 'On my return, I took back 35 people,' he said. Last Saturday, HT spotted 10 trucks ferrying household goods out of slum clusters across South City 2, Sector 45, Sector 47, Palam Vihar, Sector 109, Sector 69–70, Sector 57, Wazirabad, and Badshahpur. City without 'help' The urban villages that grew like moss around upscale neighbourhoods in Gurugram are now depleted. And across the (class) divide, there is some alarm too, but for different reasons. 'Our maid left overnight. No warning,' said Reema Singh, a South City 2 resident. 'Now I do chores, work full-time, and manage a toddler. It's exhausting.' Rajiv Mehta, who lives in Sector 48, concurred. 'Our car washer disappeared. He was from West Bengal. He had been with us for five years. Now, even if others come, how do we ensure they won't leave tomorrow?' Some residents expressed empathy. 'My wife is a teacher, and I am in a sales job. Without our house help, everything is haywire,' said Vinay Malhotra. 'But we are not angry at them. They left because they were scared.' Imran Ali, a cook from Sector 57, said his employer helped him leave. 'He gave me ₹2,000 and said, 'Take care of your family.' But not everyone was that lucky. Some employers didn't even return their calls.' The departure has also triggered ripples in the city's fringe zones, where rental homes in areas such as Wazirabad, Chakkarpur, and Sikanderpur now sit empty. 'Won't detain anyone but will continue verification' Gurugram Police now say they will not detain anyone, but that verification will continue. 'We are not holding anybody, but the verification is continuing. Now, only those who come across as very suspicious will be detained,' said Kumar. Many who left Gurugram said it might be too late. 'We paid rent, followed rules, worked with dignity, and yet, we had to escape like criminals,' said Nazma. Some are certain they won't come back. 'We burnt our bridges,' said Anwar Hossain, who worked as a cook in DLF Phase 3. 'We ran, sold everything, spent every rupee. How can we come back?' Others aren't as sure. Bibi is now back in Bengal, secure in her large joint family where her sisters-in-law welcomed her. She is planning to travel to Kolkata and work there for a few months as whatever she can – cook, cleaner, helper. But she knows the market is saturated and the pay is far lower than what she was getting in Gurugram. 'We will have to go back,' she said. Noile khabo ki (What will we eat otherwise)?'
New York Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
How Netanyahu Played Trump for a Fool in Gaza
On July 26 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran this headline: 'Israel at War Day 659. Gaza Medical Sources: At Least 25 Killed by Israeli Gunfire, Some While Waiting for Aid.' If you had been following this Gaza story closely, you would know that Haaretz was running a similar headline almost every day for weeks — only the number of Palestinians killed while waiting for food aid handed out by Israel in Gaza changed. As I watched these stories pile up, the thought occurred to me that roughly a month earlier Israel had managed to assassinate 10 senior Iranian military officials and 16 nuclear scientists sitting in their homes and offices. So how was it that Israel had the capacity to destroy pinpoint targets in Iran, some 1,200 miles from Tel Aviv, and could not safely deliver boxes of food to starving Gazans 40 miles from Tel Aviv? That did not seem like an accident. It seemed like the product of something deeper, something quite shameful, playing out within the extremist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Key figures in Bibi's extreme-right ruling coalition, like the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, openly pushed a policy that would result in the starvation of many Gazans — to the point where they would leave the strip entirely. Bibi knew the United States wouldn't let him go that far, so he provided just the bare minimum of aid to prevent being toppled by the Jewish supremacist thugs he'd brought into his government. Alas, that turned out to be a little too bare, and terrible pictures of malnourished children started emerging from Gaza, prompting even President Trump to declare on Monday that there is 'real starvation stuff' happening in Gaza. 'You can't fake that. We have to get the kids fed.' How did we get here, where a Jewish democratic state, descended in part from the Holocaust, is engaged in a policy of starvation in a war with Hamas that has become the longest and most deadly war between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel's history — and shows no sign of ending? My answer: What makes this war different is that it pits what I believe is the worst, most fanatical and amoral government in Israel's history against the worst, most fanatical, murderous organization in Palestinian history. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
After Mamata posts ‘torture' of Malda woman by cops, Delhi Police questions her, says no proof of her claims
Hours after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee posted a video of a woman and her one-year-old child on her X handle, alleging that police beat up a migrant family from Malda's Chanchal area in BJP-ruled Delhi, police rejected the charge, claiming it was a concocted story 'that fell apart' after the woman was questioned. The family of Sajnur Bibi, the woman said to be in the video, however, stuck with their allegations against the Delhi Police. Bibi had claimed that policemen in plainclothes had come to her house in East Delhi's Geeta Colony at 11 am on July 26 (Saturday) and took her into custody despite taking her documents the day before. While in custody, she claimed, she and her one-and-a-half year-old son were beaten and she was forced to pay Rs 25,000. According to Bibi, the policemen took her to a park behind K R Mangalam Hospital where they subjected her to physical assault and extortion. Speaking to The Indian Express, Bibi's husband Mukhtar Khan said: 'I had gone out for work and my wife was cooking lunch (on Saturday). When I returned, she was nowhere to be seen. When I called her, she told me she had gone out to buy vegetables… After some time, I got a call from an unknown number… My wife had called me from someone else's phone and told me to come and get her because she had lost her way. When I went to pick her up from the park, I saw my child had bruises on his ear and forehead… She told me later what had happened,' said Khan. According to Khan, the police had come to their house a day before as well to verify whether the family were illegal immigrants. 'They took one look at our Aadhaar cards and told us that we're Bangladeshi… After that we kept getting calls from unknown numbers telling us that if we try to run away, we will be in trouble,' alleged Khan. Khan claimed that the calls frightened them, prompting him to make arrangements to leave for home in Malda. However, before they could leave for the railway station on Sunday, the police rounded them up and brought them to Madhu Vihar police station for questioning. The Delhi Police, however, said that the family was called for questioning on Sunday after the West Bengal chief minister posted a video on her X handle. 'We brought them in after we saw the social media post by the West Bengal chief minister. We had to verify their version of events since no one in the police station was aware of any verification drive being conducted in the area,' a Delhi Police officer said. 'We examined the CCTV footage along the entire route that the woman (Sajnur Bibi) said she was taken by the policemen. In the footage, she can be seen walking alone with her children… In fact, we even lined up all the police personnel in front of her and asked her to identify to us who had detained her and hit her child, but we got no answers,' DCP (East) Abhishek Dhania told The Indian Express. 'When we questioned both the husband and wife, they told us that she had actually lost her way back home. They later concocted the story after the husband's uncle – who is a political worker in TMC – told them to,' added the DCP. According to the police, the couple's Call Detail Record (CDR), too, didn't reveal any threats or extortion calls being made by anyone. Meanwhile, the chairman of West Bengal Migrant Labourer Welfare Board, Samirul Islam, claimed that the Delhi Police detained the family again to pressure them. 'This is nothing less than terror on migrants from West Bengal. Now, a child is also not spared. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee highlighted the plight of the mother and child detained by Delhi Police. Hours later, the family was again picked up by Delhi Police. They must be forcing them to deny the incident. This cannot be tolerated,' said Islam, a Rajya Sabha member of the TMC. According to relatives, Sajnur Bibi is a mother of three children and works as a caretaker in a public toilet along with her husband in the Pandavnagar area of Delhi. According to the woman's father -in-law, the family has been staying in Delhi for the past six years and hails from Malda. Meanwhile, relatives of the family in Chanchal, in West Bengal's Malda district, lodged a complaint with the local police on Sunday night. Ravik Bhattacharya is the Chief of Bureau of The Indian Express, Kolkata. Over 20 years of experience in the media industry and covered politics, crime, major incidents and issues, apart from investigative stories in West Bengal, Odisha, Assam and Andaman Nicobar islands. Ravik won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award in 2007 for political reporting. Ravik holds a bachelor degree with English Hons from Scottish Church College under Calcutta University and a PG diploma in mass communication from Jadavpur University. Ravik started his career with The Asian Age and then moved to The Statesman, The Telegraph and Hindustan Times. ... Read More
Arab Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Arab Times
Kuwait sets up dedicated committee for women's housing affairs
KUWAIT CITY, July 27: Minister of State for Municipal Affairs and Minister of State for Housing Affairs, Abdullatif Al-Mishari, issued a ministerial decision on Sunday to establish a permanent committee dedicated to women's housing affairs. The committee will be chaired by Sheikha Bibi Yousef Saud Al-Sabah. In a statement, the Public Authority for Housing Welfare (PAHW) affirmed that the decision underscores the vital role of women in society and reflects the government's commitment to upholding women's rights through dedicated mechanisms. It also builds on a previous initiative to form a women's housing team, granting the new committee expanded authority to provide housing care and ensure a dignified standard of living for women. The newly established committee consists of eight members, including Acting Deputy Director for Distribution and Documentation Affairs Bader Al-Subaie, Director of the Follow-up Department Mohammed Al-Adwani, and Supervisor of Housing Care Research and Administrative Affairs Asma Al-Jafour. Additional members include Ali Al-Ustadh as a representative of the Ministry of Interior, Fawzia Dashti, legal advisor Abdulaziz Al-Afaisan representing the Credit Bank, and Bashayer Al-Bather. The committee's responsibilities include reviewing grievances related to decisions issued by the Government Rented Housing Committee concerning women's housing, investigating related complaints, and evaluating special cases that require housing assistance under specified criteria. It is also tasked with overseeing lotteries for the allocation of government-rented housing in accordance with Chapter Six of the Housing Care Regulations. Furthermore, the committee will work on developing concepts for improving women's housing services, supervising properties allocated to women—such as the Sabah Al-Salem Residential Complex—and exploring methods for their development. The committee will also clarify procedures related to project implementation and submit recommendations aimed at enhancing housing care services for women. The PAHW added that the decision allows the committee to form subcommittees or working groups from among its members or external experts to examine specific topics. These groups will be responsible for preparing reports and advising the main committee, though external members will not hold voting rights.
