December 11, 2025
Sagarika Ghose’s Zero Hour mention on the harassment of Bengali-speaking migrant workers who are bona fide citizens of the country
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the opportunity. Migrant labourers build our urban infrastructure and are indispensable to daily urban functioning. Yet, it is they who suffer the most. When a terrible fire at a ‘Goa night
club’ killed 25 people this week end, many people who died were migrant labourers. When the 2020 Covid lockdown was clamped with a four hour’s notice, it was again migrant labaourers who suffered the most as they had to walk thousands of kilometers to their home villages. According to the 2011 Census, one in every three urban residents is a
migrant worker. Urban migrant workers live in slum clusters without proper facilities. About 66 per cent households only in some slum clusters have access to toilets. Sixty-five million live in the slums, according to the 2011 Census. In Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, in the Jai Hind Bengali Colony, Bangla speaking migrants are daily threatened with evictions and demolitions. Bangla-speaking migrant workers in Delhi and Gurgaon have found it particularly difficult since the local police brand them as Bangladeshi when they are bona fide citizens of this country with all identity papers. …. Women make up almost half of urban migrants. Behind this statistics lies many harrowing stories. Five months ago, on June 21st.. Sonali Khatun, a 26 year old heavily pregnant migrant worker in Delhi, was picked up along with her family by the Delhi Police …She was deported to Bangladesh with her family including her eight year old son. Another Bangla speaking migrant worker in Delhi, 32 year old single mother, Sweety Bibi, and her family were also picked up by the Delhi Police and sent to Bangladesh. .It required the intervention of the hon. Supreme Court and before that, the Kolkata High Court, the relentless efforts of the Bengal Government and the relentless efforts of my Rajya Sabha colleague here, Shri Samirul Islam, that Sonali Khatun and her eight year old son could finally return to India and go home to her family at Birbhum in Bengal. The Kolkata High Court commented on the deportation of these migrant workers by saying, ‘What is the hot haste of the Delhi Police and the Union Government in their proceedings against Sonali, deporting her without a fair hearing or adequate inquiry?”An MHA memo of May 2025 says this kind of immediate deportation is only allowed in emergent circumstances and only after proper inquiry, which the Court said was conspicuously absent… Why this desire to deport Sonali Khatun and Sweety Bibi without due process? Is it simply because of a political motive to call Bangla-speaking people infiltrators and ghuspaithiyas? …Is there a political motive in the manner, the hot haste with which these migrant workers have been pushed…
