In this first week of June 2026, Jadavpur railway station, in the immediate vicinity of Jadavpur University, ceased to be merely a busy transport hub in south Kolkata. It mutated into ground zero for a tense confrontation over human livelihood, state coercion, and the right to the city witnessed in West Bengal in recent times. What the state apparatus justified as a routine “anti-encroachment” drive rapidly triggered a massive, cross-class resistance movement. Bringing together informal workers, street vendors, CPI(M)-led Left activists, university students, and the cultural vanguard of Bengal, the battle of Jadavpur has exposed the brutal realities of urban development under the emerging Bulldozer Raj. Left leaders—including Party Central Committee member Sujan Chakraborty, SFI General Secretary Srijan Bhattacharya, and celebrated theater personality Joyraj Bhattacharya—alongside countless activists, stood eye-to-eye against the batons of the police, RAF, and central forces. The Left has issued an unequivocal warning from the blood-slicked land of south Kolkata that the politics of the bulldozer will find no absolute rule in Bengal.
The Human Cost
At the heart of this conflict are hundreds of hawkers and small traders whose lives revolve around the station precinct. Tea sellers, fruit vendors, food stall owners, tailors, and cobblers have built modest livelihoods over generations of unremitting labor. Their stalls, cobbled together from tin sheets, bamboo poles, and tarpaulin, represent the fragile economic foundation of working-people households. These informal enterprises pay for school fees, life-saving medicines, rent, and daily meals, meaning entire families depend on them for survival.
On Tuesday, May 2, the administration made its first overt move, announcing that they were deploying bulldozers into the precinct, with the formal notice being served only that afternoon. Following this, the CPI (M) and various Left-leaning organizations launched an immediate door-to-door mobilization across the neighborhood. A fierce resistance was forged under the leadership of Srijan Bhattacharya and prominent lawyer Samim Ahmed. In a deployment mirroring a war zone, the administration pushed bulldozers into the area under the protection of hundreds of police and CRPF personnel. The specific issue in Jadavpur extends beyond hawking—a fundamental question of human shelter. After being confronted with the High Court order, the railway officials and police administration relented, promising that once the High Court reopens on June 8, they would deliberate on the ruling and grant a 21-day window starting from that date. The sit-in demonstration and protests continued late into the evening. Ultimately, defeated by the force of logic and legal precedent, the bulldozers were forced to retreat for the day. . This temporary reprieve did not calm anxieties; it merely signaled that a far more aggressive state intervention was imminent. Jadavpur entered a state of total, nocturnal vigilance.
To understand the sheer audacity of this eviction drive, one must look at the shifting political landscape of West Bengal. The newly installed BJP government has approached urban planning with a detached elitist entertainment. They openly question why street vendors should be permitted to display their wares on roadsides, summarily branding them as illegal encroachers who must be excluded from the urban space. Capitalizing on this arrogant mindset, the railway administration has embraced a corporate-centric model of development. The unstated yet clear directive is that corporate monopolies, not the working poor, shall profit from railway land.
Sensing a political head start and bereft of accountability, the central authorities determined that the moment was ripe to deploy bulldozers, obliterate station-side slums, and showcase their double-engine power by destroying the livelihoods of the poor.
Midnight Assault
Flouting all previous promises, the entire railway siding precinct was cordoned off with high guard rails starting yesterday afternoon, May 7. Word spread that the bulldozers were returning. Around 9:00 PM, a massive deployment of police, CRPF, and RAF personnel began patrolling multiple arterial roads. From 9:00 PM onwards, CPI (M) leaders alongside leaders of other Left-leaning organizations, made repeated appeals over microphones demanding an audience with any railway official, asserting that this unethical eviction would not be tolerated. The police flatly refused to relent, stating that nothing could be done as they were acting under strict orders from the DC South to execute the drive that very night.
After midnight, the situation grew tense. By then, the entire area had been transformed into a virtual war zone, swarming with police and the armed might of the state machinery. Right in front of the railway siding, CPI (M) and left and democratic activists formed a human chain, standing defiantly to block the bulldozers from entering. They were joined by a section of local residents and the affected hawkers—completely unarmed, holding onto the singular demand to have a dialogue.
Around 12:45 AM, the police ordered the bulldozers to crank their engines, escalating tension to a boiling point. The police barricaded the approaching crowd. Immediately, a brutal lathi charge was unleashed. The police charged indiscriminately, sparing neither men nor women. A vicious, unbridled baton charge raged for nearly forty minutes. The police pinned leading protestors. By then, the bulldozers had forced their way inside. One after another, shops and homes collapsed with a sickening crunch. Meanwhile, out on the streets, the police continued their reign of terror, brandishing batons and guns against innocent, unarmed citizens.
Cultural and Gendered Struggle
Rather than crushing the movement, the midnight violence catalyzed a massive counter-mobilization across the state. From 2:30 AM on June 8, Led by the Students' Federation of India Kolkata, hundreds of students maintained a continuous blockade demanding the immediate release of the detainees and a halt to the illegal demolitions. This resistance found an immediate, powerful ally in Bengal's cultural community.. In a region where art has long been the language of dissent, their songs and presence transformed the protest camp into bastions of moral defiance.
Simultaneously, working-class women stepped onto the front lines. Mobilizing massive protest rallies across south Kolkata. They highlighted the gendered brutality of the Bulldozer Raj, arguing that the destruction of a stall does not simply erase a business, but dismantles the fragile internal economy of a household, directly endangering children's nutrition, healthcare, and education. On the legal front, Advocate Samim Ahmed publicly challenged the statutory basis of the operation, noting that the Railways had failed to produce any formal regulation authorising such an eviction. Even in cases of unauthorized occupation, he argued, due process, proper notice, and an opportunity for legal representation are non-negotiable.
Senior leaders sharpened the ideological critique; with CPI (M) Central Committee member Sujan Chakraborty arguing that informal workers cannot simply be erased from urban life for administrative convenience or corporate gains.
Relentless Resurgence
On Monday, June 8, the Court granted bail to Srijan Bhattacharya and the four other detained activists on personal bonds. Out of custody, the left wasted no time to vigorously articulate the critique against the state model of development, questioning whether progress was meant only for the elite while those surviving through small businesses were denied their fundamental rights as citizens. Subsequently, the streets of Jadavpur have reverberated with a massive, resurgent march through the affected areas where the crowds doubled with the central slogan of rehabilitation before eviction.
The Left stand remains clear and historically grounded that there is a profound socio-historical and economic context behind the existence of the rail hawkers and railway settlements. No one chooses a precarious, grueling life on the edge of a platform out of luxury or caprice. In many instances, most notably in the Jadavpur precinct, these occupations possess valid, legally cognizable grounds rooted in decades of urban survival, refugee resettlement, and structural underdevelopment.
The authorities maintain that these anti-encroachment measures are necessary to enforce public order and modernize urban space. But the flattened ruins of Jadavpur present a fundamental question that cuts to the heart of constitutional democracy regarding who has a right to occupy the city and whose claims to legality be recognized. The fierce, defiant resistance led by the Left in Jadavpur, Shyamnagar, and across the state has drawn a clearbarricade, sending a message to the new regime that despite the double-engine power of state suppression, the lawless rule of the bulldozer will not pass unchallenged in Bengal.
(The author is a freelance journalist.)
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