Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced Shramashree, a rehabilitation scheme that offers several benefits, including financial assistance and assured employment, to migrant workers who were forced to return home because of persecution in BJP-ruled states.

The scheme will cover those forced to return to Bengal on account of “saffron harassment” from among the 22 lakh workers registered with the state government’s migrant workers’ portal.

“Bengali workers are returning in a helpless situation because of linguistic persecution and harassment. They are being criminalised for speaking their mother tongue, despite being Indian citizens, and that is why we have made a decision. Bengali-speaking migrant workers will be brought back, for those who want to come back. We have taken a new initiative for their rehabilitation,” said the chief minister at a Nabanna news conference.

Under the scheme, each returning worker will receive a one-time grant of ₹5,000, including travel assistance, along with a monthly rehabilitation allowance of ₹5,000 for one year or until a new job is arranged for them. Beneficiaries will also be provided with Khadya Sathi ration cards, Swasthya Sathi health insurance, and guaranteed school admission for their children.

“The administration has been instructed, and the chief secretary (Manoj Pant) will monitor this process.... If they do not have a house, arrangements would be made for accommodation as well,” said Mamata. “The main objective is to get the migrant workers from Bengal back home and help them earn a livelihood here. This new plan is focused on helping migrant workers return and become economically independent.”

"We will protect their livelihoods... we will ensure they get employed. Whoever is compelled to return, from the 22 lakh," she added.

Mamata said around 10,000 workers — from 2,700-odd affected families — had already returned to Bengal in recent months, succumbing to “Bengali-phobic” persecution in NDA-ruled states.

“If any (Indian) is spotted speaking in Bengali, they are being identified as a criminal, and for this offence, sometimes such people are forcibly being pushed back into Bangladesh, arrested, or harassed by police. By now, most of these 22 lakh migrant workers and their families have been harassed for speaking in Bengali in those states,” she said.

The chief minister said the labour department would be nodal to the scheme, and assured employment opportunities, besides skill-development training.

“Those who return will be assessed to identify the skills they possess, and training will be given wherever required. They will then be involved in various types of work. Under the Karmashree scheme, they will also be provided with job cards,” she said.

The announcement of the new scheme for migrant returnees will turn out to be a politico-electoral masterstroke, hoped Trinamool Congress leaders.

A BJP leader said on the condition of anonymity that the scheme could be yet another nail in the party's electoral coffin for Bengal. ".... We don’t know yet what the plans are for mitigating this, but something effective — beyond hate-mongering and doubling down on whatever’s being done — needs to be brought in to counter this immediately,” said the leader.

Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition, however, claimed that nobody was going to opt for the scheme.

“Nobody at all, not one person will take this…. Migrant workers earn ₹5,000 per day (outside Bengal). She hasn’t the slightest idea,” he claimed.

Several colleagues in the BJP state unit said in private that his claim was “ludicrous”.

“Whatever she does is to help Muslim Bangladeshis and the Rohingya anyway, not true Bengalis…. No true Bengali would vote for her next year. None of this matters,” added Adhikari.