TMC supporters throng Kolkata for Martyrs' Day rally

Kolkata: Tens of thousands of Trinamool Congress workers from villages and towns across the state are streaming into Kolkata for the ruling party’s ‘Marty’s Day’ rally on Friday.

Many enthusiast party workers buoyed by a recent victory in rural polls have already arrived and have been staying in camps in Salt Lake and elsewhere.

The TMC, which is part of the newly formed non-BJP alliance I.N.D.I.A, is likely to spell out at the rally its strategy for strengthening opposition unity and its design to counter the saffron party in the state.

"The July 21 Martyrs' Day Rally holds a special place in our hearts. We have been dedicating this day to our martyrs and party workers," West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee has said in a video message.

The rally, considered to be a demonstration of TMC's mass support and strength, is being held when several leaders of the party are behind bars in corruption cases. The cases are being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Posters and banners bearing photographs of party supremo Mamata Banerjee and asking people to join the rally to be held in the five-point Esplanade crossing have dotted the streets, lanes and by lanes of the city.

Lakhs of people are expected to attend the rally the party has been organising for many years in memory of 13 Congress supporters who were shot dead in police firing in 1993 during a march to the state secretariat - Writers Buildings - when the CPI(M)-led Left Front was in power in the state.

Mamata Banerjee was the state Youth Congress chief at that time and she continued to hold the rally on the day every year even after forming the Trinamool Congress on January 1, 1998.