by our special correspondent :The politics of migrant labour is heating up.With Amit Shah and Trinamul locked horn a spate of words started between them. Stating that Amit Shah should apologise or prove his allegations that the West Bengal government was not allowing trains with migrant workers, TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee alleged on Saturday the home minister was spreading a “bundle of lies” after staying silent for weeks.Union Home Minister Shah, in a letter to chief minister Mamata Banerjee, said the West Bengal government is not allowing trains with migrant workers to reach the state that may further create hardship for the labourers.Banerjee, the nephew of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, said Shah was talking about the very people who have been left to fate by the Centre. All forms of public transport, including railways, remain suspended during the period.In his letter the Home Minister accused the Bengal government of not allowing “shramik (worker)” trains run by the Railways to reach the state and declared this to be an “injustice” for Bengali migrants stranded across the country. Mr Shah pointed out that the centre had, so far, helped over two lakh migrants return home amid the coronavirus lockdown and warned the Bengal government that non-cooperation would create hardship for its migrants.Earlier, on May 5 and 6, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla wrote to West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha highlighting “poor supervision and implementation of crowd control measures by the district authorities” and flagged stopping of essential goods vehicles by the State government to cross over to Bangladesh during the ongoing lockdown.
