Mamata wants Delhi help on migrant influx

Railway ministry trying to worsen country's plight, says CM

Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday rued the triad of tragedies Bengal was now trapped in and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah to extend help to tackle at least the problem of the en masse return of stranded migrant workers so that there wouldn’t be an exponential growth in the Covid-19 outbreak.

With conspicuously less belligerence than her signature style in dealing with the saffron camp and its government at the Centre, the Bengal chief minister requested the Centre to intervene.

“I told Amit Shah some days ago, directly. You all don’t know this,” the Bengal chief minister said at a meeting with officials of various district administrations. The meeting that was televised live was on the triangular front of Covid-19, the return of lakhs of migrant workers amid the lockdown and Cyclone Amphan.

“You (Shah) are sending teams after teams (two inter-ministerial central teams)… go right ahead. If you feel the Bengal government is not able to handle it, why don’t you take over yourself? You handle Covid-19 yourself, I have no objection to that,” said the Trinamul Congress chief.

Even on May 11, Mamata had complained to Modi during his videoconference with all chief ministers against Shah, seated behind the Prime Minister, for insinuating that Bengal was not keen on bringing back migrants from other states.

On Wednesday, however, Mamata seemed far less aggressive.

“But I have to thank him (Shah), because then he told me — he is not present here now — but he had said: “Nahi, nahi. Chuni hui government ko hum kaisey tod saktey hain (No, no. How can we break an elected government)?’” said the Trinamul chief.

Shah, however, is known for having commandeered several elected state governments through execution of the BJP’s Operation Kamal.

Sources in the Trinamul Congress said Mamata was simply trying not to rub the Centre the wrong way after Amphan ripped through south Bengal. They said she maintained that during Modi’s visit to the state on Friday and did not budge on Wednesday.

“I would not have told you (about the Shah exchange), but because this is the situation now…. I would urge Amit Shah to take care (of this),” said Mamata.

“I urge the Prime Minister and the Union home minister, please look into this seriously, so that Covid-19 does not increase and the people don’t have to suffer even more in the future…. This is not the time for politics,” she said. “What can I do? In this situation, I would ask for the Prime Minsiter’s intervention in this. Please help us.”

Mamata said the state had been able to get a grip on the pandemic, but with lakhs entering the state daily, there was a threat of a sharp rise. “I don’t want you to worry, but I myself am worried,” she said.

“Eleven trains tonight, 17 in the morning, just understand, all released at one go. I simply don’t get why, to disturb me politically, they bring ruin to Bengal…. Does the railway ministry have no responsibility, no commitment?” she asked.

Mamata, who seemed to keep distinguishing between Modi-Shah and Goyal, accused the railway ministry of trying to worsen the country’s plight.

“If you are removing them from Mumbai and sending them to Bengal, the containment zones are increasing. All states are part of the same country. Whichever state is affected, it’s the problem of the whole nation. Those who don’t understand this, I don’t have the capacity to explain it to them. Maybe I understand less than them,” she said.

The chief minister also brought up the politicisation of the power outage following Amphan, which the BJP’s state unit has seemed eager to gain from.

Reiterating more than once that CESC was privatised and given a virtual monopoly in the city in 1989, when the Left Front was in power in Bengal and the Congress at the Centre, Mamata said she had received an update from the utility that power supply to another 70,000 consumers would be restored by the end of the day. That would still leave 30,000 of CESC’s 33 lakh consumers without power, which went on May 20, for at least 168 hours.

Mamata said out of 103 affected civic areas under the state-run distribution utility, it had restored supply in most parts of 101, other than Pujali and Gobordanga.