Panja meets CM: Maharashtra halts deportations till Durga pooja

There was ample indication that the dispute over the deportations had not been resolved with both former Union minister Ajit Panja heading the Trinamool delegation and the Chief Minister addressing separate press conferences at Mantralaya here.

Panja, who earlier visited Bengalipura and BPT rail lines areas predominantly populated by Bengali-speaking people along with Trinamool MPs Sudeep Bandhopadhya and Akbor Ali Kandoker, told media persons that he had secured letters written by WB acting Chief MinisterBhattacharjee to Maharashtra approving certain cases of deportations.

quot;Has Bhattacharjee disclosed this?quot; Panja asked, adding, quot;I have got hold of these documents and will take it back with me to West Bengal,quot; he said.

However, Manohar Joshi who spoke to media persons later, did not confirm that there were such letters. Joshi said cases of all the recent 96 deportees had been checked and there was no doubt that they were genuinely Bangladeshi nationals. But, if at all, there were some mistakes they would be rectified, he said. However, the overall policy of deportation of illegal foreigners would continue, he clarified.

While the Trinamool Congress put on kid gloves in an attempt to rescue the State and Central governments, the the Forward Bloc team was distinctly combative and hostile to the Maharashtra government even as it spouted the same concerns as the FB.

The Forward Block, a constituent of Jyoti Basu8217;s CPM-led government, advocated the need for government-level talks between India andBangladesh for the deportation of illegal immigrants as also that between the Maharashtra and West Bengal Governments. The Trinamool Congress, on the other hand, alleged that political overtones were being lent to a problem which had existed since 1982.

The FB and, strangely, the Samajwadi Party, which has little stake among Bengalis in West Bengal or Mumbai, threatened to take to the streets if the Sena-BJP government continued to deport quot;Bengali-speaking people of Indiaquot;in the name of Bangladeshi nationals.

The Trinamool Congress, on the other hand, was impressed by the quot;transparency and accountabilityquot; of the Sena-BJP government in the ongoing deportation process and put the onus on the media.

Panja also met the State Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister Gopinath Munde. The delegation would visit some more localities tomorrow.

The Forward Block, though, could not meet the Chief Minister today. But it has written a letter to Joshi complaining about the alleged harassment by the Mumbai police ofIndian Bengali Muslims. They, however, hope to nail Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde in Pune tomorrow where the FB team will be attending its own national level meeting on Sunday.

Strangely, both the FB and TC teams agreed, drawing their own different interpretations each compelled by their separate political affiliations, felt that the deportation issue had been blown out of proportion. While the FB said a communal colour was being lent to the issue by certain political parties for their own nefarious gains, Panja charged another set of political parties with attempting to draw mileage out of a routine process.