New Delhi: The politics between the centre
and West Bengal amid the pandemic is heating up. For the last one month,
several letter missiles had been shot off from Delhi to Kolkata from a
range of officers mostly from the Home Ministry. Now Home Minister Amit
Shah has waded into the battle and written to West Bengal Chief Minister
Mamata Banerjee, accusing her of stopping "Shramik" special trains
carrying migrants from entering the state and preventing them from
coming home.
That the Home Minister had written to Ms Banerjee was
leaked on Saturday morning, leading to a day-long back and forth
between the centre and the state on who is to blame and for what.
The
letter bomb letter led to protest from the Trinamool Congress, which
shared multiple letters from Bengal to Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana
and Punjab to get eight trains with migrants back.
The letters
were dated May 8 and Mr Shah was asked to desist from politics over the
"Shramik" special trains. Trinamool lawmaker Abhishek Banerjee was the
first to react with a tweet, saying, "A HM failing to discharge his
duties during this crisis speaks after weeks of silence, only to mislead
people with bundle of lies! Ironically he's talking about the very ppl
who've been literally left to fate by his own Govt. Mr @AmitShah, prove
your fake allegations or apologise."
This was followed by a 90-minute press meet by three Trinamool
leaders, attacking the Home Minister for playing politics amid the
pandemic. Letters from the Bengal Chief Secretary to his counterparts in
several states, including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Punjab,
were shared, indicating Bengal was on the job.
Eight trains from the four states would bring back 32,000 migrants in the next few days.
"Bengal
has been targeted. All this while it was being targeted by bureaucrats
and agencies. But today the cat is out of the bag because today the
gentleman, the honourable Home Minister of India, directly attacked
Bengal without any facts," Trinamool MP Derek O'Brien said.
"Mamata
Banerjee is not doing any of the politics. The Home Minister's letter
reached the media in Delhi before it reached the CM's office. Mr Amit
Shah has to apologise for spreading this complete bunch of lies about
what is happening in Bengal," he said. "They are doing it with testing
kits, they are doing it with IMCT (central) teams and now they are also
doing it with this letter."
Union Minister of State and BJP
lawmaker from Asansol Babul Supriyo, however, said Bengal had been
pushed into taking some action only after Mr Shah's letter to Ms
Banerjee. State BJP chief Dilip Ghosh added an appeasement twist.
"Bengal
government seems indifferent to migrants. Only two trains have come to
Bengal from two different places and one of them brought back pilgrims
of a political community and not migrant labour," Mr Ghosh said. "All
earlier letters did not work. So the Home Minister has written and the
Bengal government is definitely in trouble," Mr Ghosh added.
Communist
Party of India (Marxist) leader Md Salim blamed both sides for a
debilitating political fight. "The BJP and the Trinamool have turned the
pandemic into a pandemonium," he said. "The centre must arrange trains
for the migrants to return home. The state must arrange to screen and
quarantine them once they are back. None of that is happening. We have
offered to give trained volunteers to screen and manage the returnees.
But who is listening?"
Clarity is missing on the exact number of
trains that will be bringing migrants back in the next few days because
of the state's intervention. According to sources, Maharashtra had to
cancel two trains because the Bengal government did not respond to its
letters seeking the "destination state's consent", which is mandatory.
So
far, two trains have come to Bengal, one from Ajmer in Rajasthan and
another from Ernakulum in Kerala with some 2,400 passengers in all.
Sources
said the process to receive eight more trains is underway. A Railway
Ministry tweet this evening said, "However, WB has not approved any
train from Maharashtra, while there is a requirement of 16 trains to WB
and presently 6 requests are pending for which approval is still awaited
from WB."
The ministry tweeted that on request of Mr Shah, Bengal approved two
trains from Punjab, two from Tamil Nadu, three from Karnataka and one
from Telangana.
The chronology is muddled. Did Bengal move first
or did Mr Shah force Bengal to act? The political bickering is drowning
out key questions on how to ensure the migrants come home, how they are
quarantined and tested.
Meanwhile, Bengal's helplines for migrants
remain busy and migrants have complained at every opportunity how
difficult it is proving to make contact so they can take the first step
to heading home.
https://www.ndtv.com
Post a Comment
We love to hear from you! What's on your mind?