The Congress, which originally led the agitation in 1993 before many of its youth leaders later joined Mamata Banerjee to form the Trinamool Congress, is also holding a separate programme at Shahid Minar in central Kolkata.
Published: July 21, 2026, 11:29 AM IST
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TMC Supremo Mamata Banerjee
Kolkata: West Bengal’s politically charged July 21 Martyrs’ Day observance entered an unprecedented phase on Tuesday, with three rival political camps set to hold parallel programmes within a radius of barely 2.5 km in central Kolkata, turning an annual commemoration into a contest over legacy, organisational strength and political relevance.
Hours before the programmes, former chief minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee spent the night at her faction’s programme venue near Birla Planetarium after it alleged that the stage, banners and sound system had been vandalised by “BJP-backed miscreants” in an attempt to derail the event.
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Accompanied by senior leaders, including Abhishek Banerjee, Derek O’Brien, Kalyan Banerjee and Dola Sen, Mamata remained at the venue throughout the night, with party workers guarding the stage till Tuesday morning. Addressing supporters at the venue around midnight, Mamata alleged that workers and families of those killed in the 1993 police firing were being prevented from attending the programme.
“Our workers are being stopped from coming to the meeting. Families of the martyrs are being intimidated by the police. Our stage has been vandalised, banners torn, and power and microphone lines cut. Around 60-65 BJP-backed goons, led by a criminal who is out on court orders, carried out the attack,” she alleged.
Without naming Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, Mamata accused the BJP government of trying to disrupt the programme through “police action and intimidation”. The BJP rejected the allegations. State minister Dilip Ghosh questioned why Trinamool Congress leaders had been camping at the venue since Monday night.
“This is supposed to be a programme to honour martyrs, not a protest stage. They can sit there all night, but nobody is with them anymore. They betrayed the martyrs, their families and ultimately the people,” Ghosh said.
The July 21 programme, observed by Mamata Banerjee since 1994 to commemorate the death of 13 Youth Congress workers in police firing during a march to Writers’ Buildings in 1993, has long served as the party’s biggest annual political mobilisation.
This year, however, the event carries an entirely different political significance.
For the first time since the BJP ended the Trinamool Congress’ 15-year rule in the West Bengal assembly elections earlier this year, the anniversary is being observed amid a split in the party and a changed political landscape.
The Mamata Banerjee faction is holding its programme on Cathedral Road near Birla Planetarium after securing permission from the Calcutta High Court.
The rival faction led by Leader of Opposition Ritabrata Banerjee, which claims to be the “real Trinamool Congress”, is organising a parallel rally near the Gandhi statue on Mayo Road, barely a short distance away.
The Congress, which originally led the agitation in 1993 before many of its youth leaders later joined Mamata Banerjee to form the Trinamool Congress, is also holding a separate programme at Shahid Minar in central Kolkata.
The proximity of the three venues has prompted a massive security deployment across Kolkata’s central business district, with the police erecting barricades, regulating traffic and deploying drones and additional personnel to prevent any confrontation.
The BJP government has also altered the political narrative surrounding the anniversary.
On Monday, Adhikari tabled in the assembly the long-withheld judicial commission report into the 1993 firing and accused the previous Trinamool Congress government of suppressing its findings for political gain despite repeatedly invoking the incident as a symbol of sacrifice.
The tabling of the report has added a fresh political dimension to this year’s observance, with the ruling BJP attempting to reclaim the narrative around an event that had remained the emotional and political centrepiece of the Trinamool Congress’ annual mobilisation for over three decades.
Against that backdrop, Tuesday’s parallel programmes are expected to be watched not merely as memorial gatherings but as competing demonstrations of political legitimacy in post-regime-change West Bengal, where the battle over the legacy of July 21 Martyrs’ Day has become inseparable from the contest over the future of the opposition space.
(With PTI Inputs)
