On Sunday, a bus carrying Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers from West Bengal to Delhi for an MGNREGA protest met with an accident in Kodarma, Jharkhand, resulting in injuries to several passengers. The bus veered off the road and ended up in a field beside the highway, although the injuries were reported as minor. The injured workers were subsequently transported back to Purulia town in West Bengal for medical treatment, according to a TMC party leader.
Following the accident, West Bengal minister Shashi Panja accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of pressuring the TMC to arrange buses because a special train had not been allocated for their journey. She criticized the BJP in a tweet, writing, “Check your hands @Dr SukantaBJP, they’re red with the blood of those injured.”
In response, West Bengal BJP unit president Sukanta Majumdar claimed that while TMC leaders were traveling by airplanes, the protesters were being made to take buses to Delhi. He criticized the TMC for putting innocent people at risk and wrote on social media, “The way TMC leaders are enjoying the luxury of flights and pushed these innocent people to the brink of life risk is condemnable.”
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee also weighed in, accusing the Central government of attempting to “crush” the movement of the poor people of West Bengal in Delhi by canceling trains and deploying the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Sougata Roy, a TMC MP from Dum Dum, echoed these allegations, stating that the BJP was trying to thwart the TMC’s protests by denying train bookings and canceling flights. He emphasized the need for people across the country to see how the BJP was attempting to disrupt their programs.
In response to these allegations, the Eastern Railway countered that it had received a request for a special train from the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) but cited the unavailability of train rakes as the reason for the denial.
Despite the challenges and the accident, the TMC remains determined to carry out its protest plans in Delhi. The party intends to stage a sit-in by its MPs and state ministers at Rajghat on October 2, followed by a rally of MGNREGA job card holders on the next day.
The incident and the subsequent political accusations highlight the tensions and competition between the TMC and the BJP, especially as West Bengal has been a battleground for these two parties in recent political developments. The accident has added to the already charged political atmosphere surrounding the MGNREGA protest, further intensifying the rivalry between the two political groups.