Kolkata: Senior TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, who led a march to Raj Bhavan here on Thursday to protest against the Centre's "withholding" of funds to West Bengal, said the party will continue its demonstration outside the governor's residence until C V Ananda Bose meets the delegation. He said the demonstration will continue from 11 am to 9 pm every day with a halt at night.
Banerjee, the TMC's national general secretary, also said that he would present at the protest site even during the night but there would be no sloganeering and the usage of loudspeakers during the 14-hour period from 9 pm. "We had sought a meeting with the governor, but he did not grant us an audience. He has gone to north Bengal. It seems as if he regards us as bonded labourers. Today, we have come here, and we won't end this demonstration until he meets with us. Today, our sit-in will continue till 9 pm and will resume at 11 am on Friday," he asserted while addressing the gathering outside Raj Bhavan.
The Diamond Harbour MP emphasised that the governor, as the representative of the Centre, owed an explanation to the people of West Bengal. "We have two clarifications to seek from the Bengal governor. First, have 20 lakh workers from Bengal worked under MGNREGA or not? Second, if they have, what has been the legal basis for withholding their wages for the past two years? We will persist with our peaceful protest outside Raj Bhavan.
"I will stay here and won't move an inch until the honourable governor meets our delegation and answers these two questions," he said. Banerjee, who is de facto number two in the TMC, announced that a 25-member delegation, comprising party leaders and job card holders, would meet officials at Raj Bhavan.
They would deliver more than 50 lakh letters from "deprived" MGNREGA job card holders to either the police or administrative staff stationed outside. Led by Banerjee, TMC workers marched to Raj Bhavan to protest against the alleged withholding of West Bengal's MGNREGA dues by the Centre.
The party activists reached the governor's house, even as Bose was in north Bengal to visit the flood-affected areas there. The demonstration comes in the wake of the party's two-day protest programme in New Delhi aimed at drawing attention to the delayed payment of dues for the MGNREGA scheme, which guarantees 100 days of work for the poor in rural areas in a year and for a programme to build houses for impoverished families.
Banerjee, along with TMC's MPs, MLAs, state ministers, and supporters, including MGNREGA workers, had on Tuesday protested at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. They also held a two-hour sit-in at Rajghat on Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary before being removed by the police from there.
Subsequently, they organised a march to the Rural Development Ministry at Krishi Bhawan in the national capital, where they had a scheduled meeting with Minister of State Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti. However, after around an hour and a half, TMC leaders claimed that the minister refused to meet them, stating that she would not meet with more than five representatives.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had conducted a two-day sit-in demonstration in March this year against the Centre's alleged withholding of funds for MGNREGA and other welfare schemes. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (MGNREGA) aims at enhancing the livelihood security of households in rural areas by providing them with at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year. (PTI)
