Trinamool protesters marched to the Bengal-Assam border at Boxirhat and burnt the effigy of Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday as anger mounted over at least three notices issued by his state's foreigners’ tribunal to residents of Cooch Behar district, asking them to prove their Indian citizenship.
The protest, led by Udayan Guha, Bengal’s minister for north Bengal development and a senior Trinamool leader in Cooch Behar, was staged just adjacent to the Bengal-Assam Gate at Boxirhat, around 55km from Cooch Behar town.
Guha seized on the opportunity to give a call to uproot the BJP from Cooch Behar, a district where it enjoys considerable support.
Trinamool supporters accused the BJP-ruled Assam government of harassing Bengali Indian citizens.
“If any attempt is made to harass the residents of our villages by branding them as infiltrators, we must resist it. I urge everyone to take an oath not to allow the BJP into villages across the district. Let us make Cooch Behar a zero-BJP district,” Guha said during the rally.
Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, the Trinamool MP of Cooch Behar, said: “We ask the police not to accept such notice from the state government of Assam. Instead of receiving and delivering it to homes here, they should return it to Assam immediately.”
The protest was organised in the presence of three local residents who recently received tribunal notices from Assam — farmer Uttam Kumar Brajabasi, egg-seller Nishikanta Das and homemaker Arati Ghosh.
Senior Trinamool leaders such as MP Barma Basunia, Cooch Behar civic body chairman Rabindranath Ghosh, NBSTC chairman Partha Pratim Roy and district party chief Avijit Dey Bhowmik joined the rally.
Party leaders alleged that these tribunal notices showed that the BJP was targeting Bengali citizens across the board, not just Bengali Muslims, with the intention of creating fear and political suppression.
“The notices were sent to common people like an egg-seller and a farmer. The BJP wants to send a message that if you do not support them, you will not be allowed to live in India. This must be resisted unitedly,” Guha said.
Ghosh also condemned the action by the Assam government: “How dare they send such notices to residents of our district? We will protest this at any cost.”
The rally concluded with the burning of Himanta's effigy at the Bengal-Assam gate.
Reacting to the protest, Biraj Bose, the secretary of the BJP’s district committee, said common people would not take the speech of Trinamool leaders like Guha seriously.
“The people of Cooch Behar are no longer taking the comments of the north Bengal development minister seriously. They are now ignoring his (Guha) tall talks, which he makes often,” Bose said.
Political observers believe that chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool were likely to build further momentum on the issue of the BJP's alleged Bengali-phobia ahead of the 2026 Bengal Assembly elections.
