Will offer shelter to anyone in distress who comes knocking on our door: Mamata on Bangla situation
Kolkata, Jul 21: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday said that in the wake of the escalating violence in Bangladesh, she would keep the doors of her state open for people in distress from the neighbouring country and offer them shelter.
Banerjee referred to the United Nations resolution on refugees as justification for her stand over a possible humanitarian crisis that may emerge on account of the severe law and order breakdown that has gripped the neighbouring country over the past few days.
"I should not be speaking on the affairs of Bangladesh since that is a sovereign nation and whatever needs to be said on the issue is the subject matter of the Centre. But I can tell you this, if helpless people come knocking on the doors of West Bengal, we will surely provide them shelter," Banerjee said at the 'Martyrs Day' rally of the TMC in Kolkata.
"That's because there is a United Nations resolution to accommodate refugees in regions adjacent to those in turmoil," the West Bengal chief minister added, while drawing an example of people from Assam who were allowed to live in adjacent Alipurduar district in northern West Bengal for a considerable period during a strife in the Bodoland Territorial Region in the northeastern state.
Assuring all cooperation to West Bengal residents whose relatives may have remained stuck on account of the escalating violence on the other side of the international border, she also extended assistance to Bangladeshis who came to West Bengal but were facing difficulty in returning home.
Banerjee also appealed to the people of West Bengal not to get provoked over matters concerning the current situation in Bangladesh.
"We should exercise restraint and not walk into any provocation or excitement on the issue," she stated.
The Trinamool Congress supremo also expressed her solidarity with the people who have remained at the receiving end of the ongoing violence in the neighbouring country.
"We are sad to see blood getting spilled and my heart goes out to those students who were killed," she said.
Later in the day the chief minister listed out the assistance that the state administration provided to Bangladesh returnees.
"Hundreds of students and others are returning to West Bengal/India from trouble-torn Bangladesh. I have asked our state administration to render all help and assistance to the returnees," Banerjee posted on her X handle.
"For instance, around 300 students arrived at (the) Hilli border today and most of them left for their respective destinations safely; 35 of them, however, needed help and we provided them with basic amenities and facilitation assistance. United we stand!" she added.
President of the BJP's West Bengal unit and Union minister Sukanta Majumdar, however, opined that such matters, involving the country's foreign policies, should first be consulted with the Centre before any public statement is made.
"It's true that we are all concerned about the current situation in Bangladesh over which Delhi is keeping a close watch. Our chief minister should not be voicing her opinions on matters involving our country's foreign policies without first consulting the Centre," he said.
BJP's IT cell head Amit Malviya lashed out at Banerjee and called her stand an "evil plan to settle illegal Bangladeshis".
Taking to X, Malviya posted, "Mamata Banerjee on Odd days - We will not allow Hindu refugees, who came to India to escape religious persecution, to apply for citizenship under CAA and get their legitimate rights. If they insist, we will ask illegal Rohingyas, who vote for the TMC, to burn trains, block roads and kill people. Even days - Bangladeshis are welcome to India."
"Who gave Mamata Banerjee the authority to welcome anyone in India? Immigration and citizenship are exclusively in the Centre's domain. The states have no locus standi. This is part of I.N.D.I Alliance's evil plan to settle illegal Bangladeshis from Bengal to Jharkhand, so that they can win elections," he alleged.
Violence escalated in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka and elsewhere over student protests demanding reforms of the quota system for government jobs.
The protesters are demanding an end to a quota system that reserves up to 30 per cent of government jobs for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971 against Pakistan.
On Sunday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh scrapped most job quotas that caused the deadly unrest in the country, scaling down government jobs for veterans' descendants to five per cent and ruled that 93 per cent of jobs be allocated on merit.
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Modi govt rattled by Rahul’s Great Nicobar visit; project concerns need Parliament debate: Cong
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress on Sunday flagged in detail concerns related to ecology, tribal rights, transparency and security, over the Great Nicobar project, and asserted that these considerations must be debated in a parliamentary forum.
The opposition party claimed that the Modi government is "rattled" and in damage control mode after Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi's visit to Great Nicobar last week.
In a statement, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, "The Modi Government, clearly in damage control mode after the hugely impactful visit of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, to Great Nicobar on April 28 2026, issued a press note on the Great Nicobar Island Development Project three days later."
This press note does not address any of the serious concerns that have been raised on it by local affected communities, environmentalists, anthropologists, academics, civil society experts and other professionals, Ramesh said.
"These concerns had already been conveyed in detail by me to the Union Minister of Environment, Forests & Climate Change on September 10, 2024 and in a follow-up on September 27, 2024," the former environment minister said.
During his visit to Great Nicobar, Gandhi last week alleged that the Great Nicobar project at Campbell Bay in Andaman and Nicobar Islands was "one of the biggest scams and gravest crimes against the natural and tribal heritage of the country".
The government on May 1 released a detailed statement with answers to FAQs (frequently asked questions).
"The Great Nicobar Project is a strategic initiative to strengthen India's presence in the Andaman Sea. It seeks to balance port-led growth with calibrated environmental safeguards. Protection of indigenous communities remains central to its planning," the government statement had said.
"The project combines strategic, economic, and ecological priorities. This ensures that development is sustainable, inclusive, and aligned with national interests," it had said.
In his four-page detailed statement, Ramesh spelt out the key concerns over the Great Nicobar project.
Flagging ecological concerns, Ramesh said the Great Nicobar is unique and distinctly different from all other islands in the Andaman and Nicobar group.
"The Government's claim that only 1.82% of the total land of the island group is being used for the project is irrelevant and misleading. It ignores the ecological and biological richness of the Great Nicobar ecosystem, which is unique both in the island group and in the world," he said.
"Galathea Bay, the site of the port, is unequivocally a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) is a site where port construction is not allowed. As per records of the Zoological Survey of India, Galathea Bay is home to more than 20,000 coral colonies, a key marker of a CRZ-1a categorisation. Similarly, the beach here is the most important nesting site of the Giant Leatherback turtle in the Northern Indian Ocean," Ramesh said.
The recently concluded turtle nesting season saw record turtle nesting at Galathea Bay, he pointed out.
Ramesh alleged that institutions like the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) were literally coerced to play a key role in the environmental clearance and related process for the project.
"These very institutions have now been awarded projects for biodiversity research and monitoring in Great Nicobar. There is a clear conflict of interest here," he argued.
In addition, a couple of reputed and independent-minded institutions that have been very critical of the project have been blacklisted by the Modi government, he said.
Similar is the case with the high-powered committee (HPC) constituted by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in the matter of the challenge to the project's environmental clearance granted, he said.
All the HPC's members either represented the project proponents or agencies which granted the clearances, Ramesh said.
He said the proposal for compensatory afforestation in Haryana is a travesty of ecological principles.
Flagging tribal rights concerns, Ramesh said the Nicobarese Tribal community has expressed concerns multiple times about the project and its impact on their forests, rights, and way of life.
"In November 2022, they withdrew the NoC they had granted for forest diversion saying that they were rushed to sign by concealing the extent of tribal areas to be affected by the project. Representatives of the Nicobarese community also stated in a recent press conference that they were being forced to voluntarily surrender their land for the project," he pointed out.
The claims stand even more exposed in the matter of the Shompen, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), that lives a life of hunting and gathering in the deep forests of Great Nicobar, Ramesh said.
The Shompen are a primarily uncontacted community and there are no non-Shompen speakers of their language, he pointed out.
"It is not clear then how the project authorities have taken their informed consent, which is both ethically appropriate and legally mandated," Ramesh said.
Pointing out that government release has claimed that the airport in Great Nicobar will eventually handle 10 million passengers annually, Ramesh said this appears prima facie to be a huge over-estimation given that the current airport at Port Blair handles 1.8 million passengers annually.
"The deliberations of the Forest Advisory Committee for granting the project's forest clearance were not made public. The report submitted by the High-Powered Committee that examined the clearance granted to the project was kept confidential. The field report prepared by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) that pronounced the status of the site of the port from CRZ-1A to CRZ-1B overnight, remains confidential," he pointed out.
Ramesh also flagged security concerns about the project, saying no less a person than the courageous former Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd) himself has argued in an article that "the security capabilities of ANC (Andaman & Nicobar Command) need to be addressed separately and must have no linkage with the developments contemplated for GNI (Great Nicobar Island)."
"There is thus no need to link India's legitimate security imperatives with the so-called 'development project' - complete with a township, high-end tourist infrastructure, and large transshipment terminal - that the Modi Government is intent on bulldozing through and on which it is now trying to muzzle genuine and much-needed debate hiding behind "security considerations", he said.
"These considerations must, at the very least, be discussed and debated in a Parliamentary forum," Ramesh said.
