Several Trinamool Congress workers sustained injuries when one of the 49 buses transporting them from West Bengal to Delhi for a protest program met with an accident in Jharkhand on Sunday.
The bus veered off the highway and into a field, resulting in minor injuries to some passengers. They were subsequently brought back to Purulia town in West Bengal for medical treatment, according to a Trinamool party leader.
The Trinamool party asserted that due to the Railways’ failure to allocate a special train, they had to organize 49 buses to transport protesters to Delhi. Their protest aims to demand the state’s dues from the BJP-led central government under the 100-day job guarantee program provided by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
In response to the accident, senior West Bengal minister Shashi Panja accused the BJP of pressuring the ruling party in Bengal to arrange buses because a special train was not allotted. She expressed her sentiments on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
BJP West Bengal president Sukanta Majumdar countered these allegations, claiming that while TMC leaders traveled by airplanes, protesters were made to take buses to Delhi. He criticized TMC leaders for their perceived luxury travel.
Trinamool MP Sougata Roy alleged that the ruling BJP at the Centre is attempting to thwart TMC’s protests by denying train bookings and canceling flights. He called on the nation to witness how the BJP was obstructing their program.
The Eastern Railway contended that it had received a request from the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), and the unavailability of train cars was the reason for denying the special train.
Despite the accident and challenges, the buses, which departed from Kolkata and other districts of West Bengal on Saturday night, are scheduled to reach Delhi by early Monday. The Trinamool plans to hold a sit-in with its MPs and state ministers at Rajghat on October 2, followed by a rally of MGNREGA job card holders the next day.
Trinamool MP Abhishek Banerjee, who has been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on October 3 in connection with an ongoing investigation into an alleged school jobs scam, stated that the TMC cannot be deterred from its political programs by central agency summons. He vowed to proceed with the protests in Delhi and accused the Centre of attempting to suppress the movement of West Bengal’s underprivileged people in Delhi by canceling trains and deploying agencies like the ED and CBI.
Sources By Agencies
