Mamata Banerjee on Monday instructed the state administration to start the process to bring back migrant workers from other states.

“We have 22 lakh migrant workers. Efforts should be made to bring them home,” the Bengal chief minister said during an administrative meeting in Bolpur.

The decision has come at a time when Bengali-speaking people, especially Muslims, have been targeted in the BJP-ruled states like Delhi, Odisha, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and elsewhere.

“We will set up camps to accommodate them. Even children are being tortured,” she said. “My brothers and sisters who are facing trouble in other states bring them back and utilise their skills. During Covid we had helped the migrant workers.”

The Bengal chief minister said not lack of opportunities in their native state, rather their quality of work took them to other states.

“Why do they go to other states? They are hired because of their skills. Who will do zari work? There are 1.5crore migrants in our state but we don’t misbehave with them. This is their democratic, fundamental right. If our people are under attack, we will have to give them protection,” Mamata said.

On Sunday evening, Mamata had shared a video on X of an alleged assault of woman and her child at the hands of Delhi Police.

“Atrocious. Terrible. See how Delhi police brutally beat up a kid and his mother, members of a migrant family from Malda’s Chanchal. See how even a child is not spared from the cruelty of violence in the regime of linguistic terror unleashed by BJP in the country against the Bengalis. Where are they taking our country now?” Mamata wrote.

Recently, a college student living in a slum in Gurugram told an independent journalist clutching her class XII certificates, “We are living in an atmosphere of fear. Who will protect us? If I am forced to return to our village, what will happen to my studies? What about the 12 years of education I received here? What about our work? What if my father is taken away?”

Mamata and the Trinamool have been up in arms against alleged “linguistic terror” by the BJP targeting Bengali-speaking workers in most states, some of them allegedly undocumented.

The Trinamool MPs have decided on speaking in Bengali in both the Houses of the Parliament during the scheduled discussion on Operation Sindoor.

Last week Trinamool’s leader in the Rajya Sabha Derek O’Brien gave an address in the Parliament in Bengali.

Later on Monday, Mamata will participate in a march to start her version of the language movement to protest against BJP’s linguistic terrorism.

Later in the day, addressing a public meeting, Mamata accused the Narendra Modi government and the Election Commission of attempting to implement “NRC through the backdoor.”

“We will stop this conspiracy to jeopardise our existence in the name of linguistic terror and attempt to implement NRC by the backdoor,” Mamata said. “I won’t allow NRC or detention camps in Bengal till I am alive.”