I will always stay with Jyotiraditya Scindia: Imarti Devi

New Delhi, May 9: The Trinamool Congress on Saturday responded to Union home minister Amit Shah’s charge that the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government is not facilitating the movement of stranded migrant workers.

Amit Shah has written to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, saying her government is doing “injustice” to migrant workers by not allowing the special Shramik trains to reach the state.

“Union home minister Amit Shah speaks after weeks of silence only to mislead people with lies,” the TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

“The Centre is lying… West Bengal is running 711 camps for migrants in the state. We are taking good care of them,” Abhishek Banerjee, who is also the chief minister’s nephew, said.

Amit Shah had pointed out in his letter that the Centre was not receiving the “expected support” from the state government in helping stranded migrant workers from West Bengal.

“West Bengal government is not allowing trains with migrants reaching the state. This is injustice with WB migrant labourers. This will create further hardship for them,” Amit Shah had said in his letter to Mamata Banerjee.

The issue of migrant workers is the latest flashpoint between the Centre and the West Bengal government amid a row over the state’s efforts to control the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

The Centre and the state have exchanged allegations over the criteria for reporting deaths from the infection, and while While Bengal says the Centre is trying to politicise a public health crisis, the Union government maintains that state officials are ignoring repeated warnings to step up the fight against the disease.

Federal officials have said that the region has not conducted adequate tests and that there has been mismanagement over identifying hotspots and containing them.

Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla also slammed the state government for a very low rate of testing and high rate of mortality, 13.2%, by far the highest for any state.

The Centre has also accused the state government of not allowing cross-border movement of goods trucks to Bangladesh.

There are 1,678 Covid-19 cases and 160 deaths in West Bengal until Saturday morning.

New Delhi, Apr 10: With 896 COVID-19 cases reported in the country in the last 24 hours, India's total number of coronavirus positive cases rose to 6,761 on Friday, informed the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Out of all these cases, 6039 are active cases, 516 have been cured/discharged/ migrated, and 206 deaths have been reported so far.

The country witnessed the highest one day increase with 896 cases.

37 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.

Maharashtra with 1364 cases is the worst affected state followed by the Union Territory of Delhi with 898 cases and Tamil Nadu with 834 cases.

The country is under a 21-day lockdown until April 14 which was imposed to curb the spread of the virus.

States like Odisha and Punjab have extended the lockdown till April 30.

Kochi, Jan 21: A special court here on Tuesday sent two students, who were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) case in Kozhikode last November, to the custody of National Investigation Agency (NIA) for a day.

The NIA court ordered that the duo, who were in judicial custody till now, to be produced before it tomorrow.

In its application, the NIA had said that the accused must be interrogated on the basis of digital records and sought custody of the duo for a week.

However, the defendant argued that no new evidence had been found against the accused and therefore no custody should be granted.

During an earlier hearing, the two had told the court, "We are not Maoists. We are CPI (M) activists. The Chief Minister, who says we are Maoists, should bring proof of whom we killed and where we bombed. In the last election, we have served as CPI (M), booth agents. We are the ones who went out to vote and pasted posters for the party."

The two were charged under Sections 20 (punishment for being a member of terrorist gang or organisation), 38 (offence relating to membership of a terrorist organisation) and 39 (offence relating to support given to a terrorist organisation) of the UAPA.

Allen and Thaha, students of law and journalism respectively of Kannur University, were taken into custody by the police from Pantheerankavu in Kozhikode on November 1 last year.