Kolkata: The Trinamul Congress has decided to take over 2,000 job card-holders under the 100-day employment guarantee scheme to Delhi by a special train to participate in programmes the party plans to organise in the national capital next month to press for the Centre’s release of funds due to Bengal.
The transportation of job card holders to Delhi is the latest change in Trinamul’s plan for the protest programmes. Sources in Trinamul said there had been a number of difficulties in sticking to the original idea conceived by Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee as the venue of the protest is Delhi where the police administration reports to Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
A Trinamul leader said it had reserved a train from Howrah, which will ferry the MGNREGS workers from various Bengal districts to Delhi. The train with over 2,000 people will leave Howrah on September 30 and depart from Delhi on October 3.
Trinamul’s district leaders were recently asked to select at least 10 job card-holders, including women, from each of 341 blocks and appoint one person who would be their handler. Although Trinamul will send no more than 2,000 such people to Delhi, they will be shortlisted from the 3,410 people named by the district leadership.
“The top brass of the party want to make the Delhi protest a mega show and that is why the plan to take the beneficiaries of the rural job scheme as the participants was taken. The leaders in the districts have been asked to send as many women job card holders as possible,” said a Trinamul leader in Kolkata.
Trinamul claims Bengal has central dues amounting to over £11.5 billion, of which around £700 million is on account of the 100-day employment guarantee scheme.