Mamata Banerjee to lead rally against detention of Bengal migrant workers

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee and lawmaker Abhishek Banerjee will lead a rally in Kolkata on Wednesday against the detention of migrant workers from West Bengal allegedly labelled as undocumented Bangladeshis for their deportation.

West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Tuesday said eight migrant workers from Nadia district were illegally detained in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Chhattisgarh this week, even as their families maintained they have valid Indian documents.

“Eight construction workers from Nadia, employed in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, were forcibly picked up by [chief minister] @vishnudsai’s [Vishnu Deo Sai] @CG_Police. No information was shared with their families, the GoWB [West Bengal government], or even @WBPolice [West Bengal Police]. Their phones were seized. They were thrown behind bars,” the TMC posted on X. “This is state-sponsored abduction. Let BJP be warned: Respect existence or expect resistance. We will not let our people be criminalised, dehumanised, or silenced.”

Media reports, quoting Kondagaon (Chhattisgarh) police superintendent Akshay Kumar, said that all eight men were released on Monday evening. The Chhattisgarh Police said that the eight were detained for failing to produce identity documents, even a month after entering the region.

TMC leaders said Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee will lead the protest rally through the heart of Kolkata. They said that similar detentions have been made in states such as Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Delhi. Some of the detained people were sent to Bangladesh and subsequently rescued in June.

“The detentions are continuing. A man named Siroz Alam Mian, who has been working in Delhi for years, has been detained. I know this family personally,” said Partha Pratim Roy, former TMC Lok Sabha member from Cooch Behar.

The TMC’s rally will be held as the Delhi government is scheduled to file its report in the Calcutta high court on the alleged detention of six people, including two minors, from two migrant families from West Bengal in the national capital on charges of being undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants.

The families were detained from Delhi’s Rohini area in June. The TMC has said Bengali-speaking people have been arbitrarily detained across the country. Such incidents have triggered a political row in the run-up to the 2026 assembly polls in West Bengal.

On Monday, the TMC lodged a police complaint in Cooch Behar against chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, alleging that he is targeting Bengali-speaking people in Assam. Sarma shot back on Tuesday on X. “Assam has been waging a relentless war against illegal infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims for several decades. The recent attempt by the @AITCofficial [TMC] to distort my media remarks and portray our stand as anti-Bengali is nothing but a desperate ploy to shield Muslim infiltrators from Bangladesh—whose very presence threatens to alter the demographic fabric of our nation,” he wrote.

“Let it be made absolutely clear: in Assam, every Indian citizen—including Bengali-speaking people—fully understands our position and supports our uncompromising stand against illegal Muslim immigration from Bangladesh…”

Debangshu Bhattacharya, the head of the TMC’s social media cell, countered Sarma. “You claim your Govt only targets ‘illegal Bangladeshi Muslims’. But in the final NRC [National Register of Citizens] list, out of the 19.6 lakh people excluded, 12 lakh were Bengali Hindus. Was their faith the problem too? Or was it their language?” Bhattacharya wrote.

The BJP has accused TMC of helping “illegal Muslim immigrants” procure fake identity documents to use them as a vote bank. The TMC targeted the Union government on social media by posting a video showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking on the benefits of the Aadhaar. “So @BJP4India would now have us believe that Aadhaar cards are being issued by State Govts, not by the UIDAI, a statutory authority under the jurisdiction of @GoI_MeitY headed by Half-Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw? Modi ji called Aadhaar a ‘symbol of empowerment.’ Well then, who’s responsible for turning this ‘symbol’ into a ‘national security threat’?”