Senior leaders of the CPI(M) and the BJP on Thursday separately turned up at the venue where West Bengal government employees are holding a sit-in here seeking a hike in dearness allowance, and cautioned the Mamata Banerjee administration not to sit over their 'genuine' demand.

 CPI(M) state secretary Md Salim, central committee member Sujan Chakraborty, Rajya Sabha MP Bikash Bhattacharya, and Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP went to the venue at Sahid Minar ground, where the protesters are on a sit-in which entered the 63rd day. The place is close to the place on Red Road where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was on a two-day dharna since Wednesday to protest against the Centre's “discriminatory attitude” towards the state. TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, considered number two in the party, also addressed a public meeting near it on March 29.

 Salim asserted that as one after another case of graft committed by Trinamool Congress leaders is coming to the fore and its heavyweight leaders are facing imprisonment, people have started branding the ruling party as a 'band of thieves'. "All the busloads of TMC activists, who came to attend the dharna by Mamata Banerjee and meeting by the TMC national general secretary, were called thieves by common people," Salim claimed.

 He said that the TMC regime's intimidatory tactics against the state government employees to force them to withdraw from the stir will not succeed. CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakraborty challenged the chief minister to bring out a white paper on her claim that government jobs were given to family members of Left leaders by producing handwritten chits during Left Front rule.