According to senior TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, if over 3 lakh tea garden workers in the state do not receive the provident fund and gratuity incentives by the end of this year, the homes of all BJP MPs and MLAs in West Bengal will be gheraoed.
Abhishek Banerjee asked the party’s union to begin a protest program demanding PF and gratuity from Monday itself and file police complaints against tea garden owners who deny offering these benefits. He was speaking to a rally of tea workers in the Malbazar neighborhood of the Jalpaiguri district.
According to Abhishek, BJP officials behave like migratory birds in that they arrive before elections, make a lot of promises, and then go without following through. While the TMC administration in the state made sure that all shuttered tea gardens were restored to function, the Center made a promise to take over seven closed tea plantations but did nothing about it.
Narendra Modi, he said, was a tea vendor who did little to help the employees in the tea gardens. The Centre is in charge of providing Provident Fund (PF) and gratuity benefits. He said that protests should begin the very next day. Owners of tea gardens who fail to supply these should be the subject of police complaints. And starting in January, the homes of BJP MLAs and MPs would be gheraoed if the problems are not resolved by the end of this year.
The state will open 31 child care facilities for the workers’ children over the course of the next six months, as well as primary health centers, as well as give them access to clean drinking water and land rights, according to Abhishek Banerjee, a Lok Sabha MP and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew.
The pronouncements made by Abhishek Banerjee are perceived as an attempt to reclaim control of the state’s tea belt from the BJP, which won every seat there in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and carried the trend forward by winning the most seats in the last assembly election.
Abhishek Banerjee declared that his party would fight against any attempts to split the state up and added that he disagreed with words like “north Bengal” and “south Bengal.”
Abhishek Banerjee also attacked the BJP, alleging “misuse” of the ED and CBI to persecute its political rivals.
News Mania Desk
