BJP leaders to interact with Bengali-speaking migrant workers during festivities

Kolkata, Sep 3 (IANS) Several top BJP leaders will tour different states in the country during the forthcoming festive season starting from Durga Puja, and hold interactions with Bengali-speaking migrant workers there.

This is aimed at building a counter-narrative to Trinamool Congress's allegations of harassment of Bengali-speaking migrants in other states, and presenting factual data with first-hand information collected from them, confirmed a state committee leader of the BJP.

Initially, it was decided that a team of 27 top leaders of the BJP in West Bengal, including some elected party MPs and MLAs, would visit different states during the festive season and interact with Bengali-speaking migrant workers from West Bengal currently settled there for their livelihood.

"The number of team representatives might be increased slightly if necessity arises," said the party's state committee member.

It is learnt that during the course of interaction with Bengali-speaking migrant workers in other states, the state BJP leaders going from West Bengal will ask them certain questions.

The state committee leader said that the questions to be posed to migrant workers are:

- What prompted them to take up jobs or contractual appointments in other states and get themselves far away from their family members and friends?

- Whether these Bengal-speaking migrant workers feel that any entity, state-run or private, operating in West Bengal, could match the earnings or wages that they are receiving in other states?

- What is the tentative difference in the payment they are receiving in other states from the maximum they could expect to receive in West Bengal?

The final question would be whether they had even faced any discrimination at their respective workplaces because of the language they spoke, and even from the local administration after they could duly establish their Indian identities.

On Monday, a motion was moved in the West Bengal Assembly on the first day of the Special Session of the House, to discuss the alleged harassment of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in different "BJP-ruled" states in the country.

--IANS

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