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Regular-article-logo Saturday, 14 June 2025

Haldia bar on workers for poll defeat

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ANSHUMAN PHADIKAR Published 01.08.13, 12:00 AM

Tamluk, July 31: CPM supporters in Sutahata who work in factories in nearby Haldia are allegedly being prevented from entering their workplaces by Trinamul activists ever since the results of the panchayat polls were declared yesterday.

CPM leaders in Haldia said party supporters were being attacked because they had “defied the orders” of Trinamul leaders and voted.

In Sutahata, the CPM has won three of the six gram panchayats while Trinamul has bagged two. The Left party has snatched the Sutahata panchayat samiti from Trinamul and won the two zilla parishad seats in the area.

“Local Trinamul activists had ordered our party workers and supporters not to vote. But our supporters were determined to vote as they were angry with the Trinamul government’s failure to bring investments to Haldia and the departure of HBT from Haldia port. These factors had an impact on the poll results,” said Sudarshan Manna, the CPM’s zonal committee secretary in Haldia.

“After the final panchayat poll results were declared yesterday, Trinamul activists in Haldia started identifying the contract workers and labourers from Sutahata working in factories in Haldia. The activists prevented them from joining work. They also snatched the gate passes of many of them,” Manna alleged.

A CPM leader in Haldia said nearly 7,000 workers and contract labourers come to the industrial town daily to work.

“We have received complaints from around 200 of our supporters and workers,” said Pranab Das, a district secretariat member of the CPM.

Sandip Maity, 27, a resident of Dihi Shibramnagar village in Sutahata who works as a contract labour supervisor at Dhanseri Petrochemicals, said that when he reported to work at 8am yesterday, an INTTUC member stopped him outside the factory gate and asked him to go to the union office nearby.

“Some leaders at the INTTUC office told me Trinamul had lost the gram panchayat in the area where I live. They said their party lost because we did not vote for it and so I would not be able to work in Haldia again,” Maity said.

The working president of the INTTUC in East Midnapore, Shibnath Sarkar, said: “We have not asked our activists to prevent any one from reporting for work.”

Bullet injuries

The brother of a CPM panchayat samiti winner and another party cadre was today shot at by suspected Trinamul workers in North 24-Parganas’ Swarupnagar, where the Left party has won seven of the 10 panchayat samiti seats.

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