Super emergency: Mamata says TMC leaders manhandled at Silchar airport

Mumbai: Assam government on Thursday stopped an eight-member TMC  team at Silchar airport amid restrictions imposed in the area over controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC) draft list.

Six TMC parliamentarians and two party legislators have been detained.

They went there to meet people whose names couldn’t figure in the final draft of the NRC at the instruction of party supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Banerjee claimed that members of the TMC delegation, including women, were manhandled at the airport there and accused the BJP of imposing "super emergency" in the country.

The BJP was exposed by this incident, she said and sought to know under which law was the TMC delegation stopped at the Silchar airport.

Arriving in Kolkata from Delhi, where she met a number of opposition leaders, Banerjee told reporters that when she met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the NRC issue he had assured her that no one would be harassed.

"But the TMC delegates have not been allowed to go out of the (Silchar) airport. They have been manhandled. Even women members have not been spared," she claimed.

"There is super emergency in the country. The BJP is politically exposed. They (BJP) are showing muscle power. They are suppressing facts. If there is peace (in Assam), why did they impose prohibitory order? The people of Assam are in panic," the West Bengal Chief Minister said.

Earlier, TMC lawmaker Derek O'Brien also said, "Our delegation was detained at Silchar airport. It is our democratic right to meet people, this is a super emergency like situation." 

According to a report in The Times of India, the team comprises of MPs Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Ratna De Nag, Nadimul Haque and Arpita Ghosh, West Bengal minister Firhad Hakim and legislator Mohua Moitra.

Sukhendu Sekhar Roy told news agency PTI that the police stopped them at the airport on their arrival saying their visit might create trouble and manhandled them. 

 

 

The delegation was kept in the VIP lounge of Kumbhigram airport in Cachar district under Barak Valley region.

The Cachar district administration issued prohibitory order under Section 144 of the CrPC on Wednesday night and banned entry of any person not involved with the NRC process in the district.

(With PTI inputs)