Kolkata, Jun 1 (PTI) The TMC will go ahead with its planned sit-in here against the alleged attacks on party leaders and workers, and the Railways' hawker eviction drive, despite the police denying permission
for it, party supremo Mamata Banerjee said on Monday.
She alleged that the common people and small traders were living in fear, while hawkers were being evicted without a proper rehabilitation plan.
"Why are people frightened? Why are people anxious? The entire atmosphere has changed. Kolkata and Bengal have been handed over to lumpens," the former chief minister alleged.
Banerjee alleged that 12 TMC workers had been killed since the Assembly elections and that thousands of party activists had been arrested, while many others had been forced to flee their homes.
"Democratic protests were being obstructed," she said, pointing out that police have denied permission for her party's dharna at the Rani Rashmoni Road against issues such as hawker evictions and attacks on party workers and alleged irregularities in the NEET examination.
She declared the protest would go ahead regardless of official permission. "If we are not allowed to hold a dharna there, I will sit wherever I am stopped. I am ready to be arrested," Banerjee said.
On Saturday, the party's national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee was roughed up in Sonarpur, in the southern outskirts of Kolkata, where an angry crowed pelted him with eggs and stones when he went there to visit the family of a TMC worker killed allegedly in post-poll violence.
A day later TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee was also heckled allegedly by BJP workers in the Chandipur area of Hooghly district, during which the leader said that he sustained a head injury. PTI BSM NSD
