TMC MP says 20 migrant workers, beaten up as Bangladeshis in Odisha, rescued

Kolkata: At least 20 migrant workers from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, who were branded as Bangladeshis and allegedly beaten up in Odisha earlier this month, were rescued and brought back to the state, officials aware of the development said on Thursday.
“On March 19, a week after CAA [Citizenship (Amendment) Act] rules were notified, around 20 migrant workers from Murshidabad, were attacked by a group of people at Bhadrak in Odisha. The workers were tied up, branded as Bangladeshis and beaten up,” Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Samirul Islam told reporters in Berhampore on Thursday.
The central government earlier this month notified the rules for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, paving the way for the implementation of the law.
Islam said that the migrant workers were all from the minority community and spoke in Bengali. Some of them have been working in the neighbouring state since 1999, he said
“Some of the victims managed to send us a video message addressing West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee with a plea to rescue them. The chief minister took immediate action. The Odisha government was informed and the victims were rescued within two hours,” said Islam, who is also the chairman of the Migrant Worker’s Welfare Board.
According to the 2011 census, West Bengal was the fourth biggest source of migrant workers in the country after Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. Around 580,000 people migrated from Bengal between 2001 and 2011.
Over 2.1 million migrant workers from West Bengal have applied for enrolment in the Karmasathi Parijayee Shramik portal, a government database that maintains records of migrant workers from the state.
CM Banerjee constituted the West Bengal Migrant Workers’ Welfare Board — a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country — in March.
TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien has also written a letter to Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik seeking an appointment over the incident. In the letter, O’Brien said that three party MPs and five representatives of the migrant workers would want to share the details of their ordeal.
“This is the first time we faced such harassment. I was hit with a cricket bat. I am not sure who the attackers were. They alleged that we were Bangladeshis. They claimed that our EPIC and Aadhaar cards were fake,” said Md Saifuddin Mollah, one of the victims and a resident of Samserganj in Murshidabad.