The Parijayi Shramik Oikya Mancha (Migrant Workers Unity Forum) will file Public Interest Litigations in the Calcutta High Court against the alleged harassment of Bengali-speaking migrant workers branded as “Bangladeshis” in BJP-ruled states.
On Thursday, the forum leaders Asif Farukh, Arnab Pal and some of the harassed workers met Samirul Islam, Rajya Sabha MP and chairman of the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board, who assured them of full legal support.
The forum has claimed residents of Bengal are being targeted across the country for speaking in Bengali. The PILs demand an immediate end to such incidents.
“They are Indian citizens and residents of Bengal. They have gone to Odisha for work. But they have been detained and labelled Bangladeshis. They have been sent to the detention centre. We will bring them home,” Islam said.
The Rajya Sabha MP questioned the grounds of such detentions. "Why is the Odisha police detaining people before verification? Every Indian citizen has the right to move freely within the country with valid identity documents like Aadhaar and voter ID,” he said.
“Detaining someone in police custody for over 24 hours is illegal. We have no objection to Odisha verifying people's identities with us, but that doesn’t justify detentions,” Islam added.
Five truck workers employed in Odisha are also planning to move the court, seeking compensation. Among them, M.D. Ashraful Haque and four others had businesses in Mahanga, Cuttack. They allege that police officials labelled them as Bangladeshis, harassed them, and forced them to abandon their work and return to Bengal.
On June 25, chief minister Mamata Banerjee criticised the BJP in the Bengal Assembly for “targeting poor Bengalis for political reasons”.
Banerjee said, “Indians who have valid documents, if they are found speaking in Bengali, they are being branded Bangladeshi and being detained. Today I also got reports that 300 to 400 people from the State are being detained in Rajasthan.”
Two workers from Murshidabad’s Hariharpara, Shamim Khan and Najimuddin Mondal, are also set to file a joint petition alleging that they were pushed into Bangladesh after being wrongly identified as foreigners in Mumbai.
According to them, their identification documents were taken away before they were forced across the border.
While the Bengal government later brought them back, they claimed that the Mumbai police had earlier seized all their documents and even handed them 300 Bangladeshi Taka. Photos of them holding the notes were allegedly taken as well.
This May, the BJP government in neighbouring Odisha initiated a state-wide operation to identify and deport undocumented Bangladeshi migrants.
The Bengal government has alleged that nearly 100 migrant workers from the state have been detained in Odisha and sent to detention centres on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals, according to The Indian Express.
Reports of similar incidents have emerged from multiple districts in Odisha. Detainees reportedly include Muslim workers from West Bengal who were picked up despite showing valid identification documents.
In Maharashtra, seven migrant workers were detained and later pushed back to Bangladesh through the Siliguri border after being suspected of being undocumented immigrants. Following intervention by the Bengal government, which confirmed their Indian citizenship, they were brought back.
On Tuesday, 17 detentions were deported from Balasore district in Odisha.