Members of the Bengali Bahini take out a rally. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, March 28: Nearly 1500 people today took out a rally to highlight the demands of the Bengali speaking community. Many of them were members of Bangla Bahini and came in their uniforms to march with the others in the rally, which was organised under the aegis of a Bengali group Amra Bangali.

This group, apart from claiming that almost 42 per cent of the state populace is Bengali speaking, said the state seriously needs to open education institutions in the Bengali medium.

Erstwhile Bihar boasted of about 1,000 Bengali medium schools. But with time, the numbers declined and today there were very few of them left. The LEBB High School was the only Bengali medium school in the city but a few years back even that was converted to a Hindi medium school. “More than 42 per cent of the population in the state speaks Bengali. We are, by far, one of the, if not the largest regional language speaking community in the state. So a demand to make this language one of the state language is justified,” said Pradip Roy, a member of the association.

Bangla Bahini also demands that a Bengali battalion be formed in the state.

Bikash Chandra Mandal of Amra Bangali, a Bengali association of the state, asked: “Jharkhand has almost every army battalion of the country. Why don’t we have anything called the Bengali regiment?”

Sankar Gangopadhyaya, vice-president of Amra Bangali, said: “However hard we try, we are unable to send our children to Bengali medium schools as Ranchi hardly boasts of any.”

Reservation for Bengalis in government jobs, a Bengali regiment, and making Bengali books available, were some other demands. The rally commenced from Poddar Bhawan at Chutia and culminated at the Jaipal Singh Stadium at Kutchery Road.