Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Friday directed the Union Home Ministry to submit a report regarding allegations that some migrant workers from West Bengal, residing in New Delhi, had been deported to Bangladesh.
A Division Bench comprising Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Reetobrata Kumar Mitra also instructed West Bengal Chief Secretary Manoj Pant to reach out to his counterpart in the Delhi government and obtain a separate report on the matter. Both reports are to be submitted to the court ahead of the next hearing, scheduled for July 16.
The court issued these directives while hearing a petition filed by an advocate, who claimed that migrant workers from West Bengal living in Delhi for a livelihood were recently branded as Bangladeshi infiltrators and deported. The petitioner also informed the bench that among those deported was an eight-year-old girl living in Delhi with her parents.
The incident follows a similar case brought before the Calcutta High Court involving the Odisha government. In that case, a group of migrant workers from West Bengal were reportedly detained and labelled as illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators. However, the petitioner in the Delhi matter clarified that unlike in Odisha, where deportation did not occur, the Delhi episode resulted in actual deportation.
The development came a day after a social media clash erupted between BJP’s Information Technology Chief and the party’s central observer for West Bengal, Amit Malviya, and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over reported harassment of Bengali-speaking migrant workers at Delhi’s Jai Hind Colony.
Malviya claimed that the Trinamool Congress was unnecessarily politicising the Jai Hind Colony situation, which he said was triggered by a court-ordered identification of “26 illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators being apprehended from that area a few days back”.
Mamata Banerjee, in response, accused the BJP of advancing “an anti-Bengali agenda after being rejected by the voters of West Bengal in elections.”
She further stated that “this harassment of migrant workers from West Bengal had been happening only in BJP-ruled states.”
(inputs from IANS)