Even as the Trinamool Congress and BJP pulled the long ropes of the Lord’s Chariot in different directions — one towards ancient Puri and the other towards the beach town of Digha — on the eve of Jagannath’s Rath Yatra Day, Bengal Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday offered to get distributed the “genuine and not the duplicate” Maha Prasadam among the people of Bengal.
“We will distribute the Maha Prasad of Lord Jagannath of Puri Dham in Bengal for five days, this prasad will the real and genuine Maha Prasad and not the ones that have been purchased from the ‘chacha’s Halal’ shops,” Adhikari said.
The decision to distribute the Maha Prasad — for the first time in Bengal — came weeks after the Chief Minister announced distribution of the Prasad of the newly constructed “Jagannath Dham” temple — a replica of the ancient Puri temple — of Digha.
“We won’t take recourse to cheap publicity, we are not duplicate Hindus to distribute Peda and Goja (local sweets) procured from local ‘halal’ shops to be distributed in the name of Prasad. It will be a genuine Maha Prasad that will be brought from the Lord’s abode at Jagannath Puri and distributed for five days from Gauranga Temple at Tamluk,” Adhikari said.
With what the critics called “political Hindutva” selling for premium in election-bound Bengal the BJP had been highly critical of the Chief Minister for getting constructed a parallel Jagannath temple at Digha — after the ancient Puri style.
“With the majority Hindus gradually annoyed and leaving Mamata Banerjee for her blatant appeasement politics that has taken Bengal on the verge of demographic crisis she is trying to apply these new techniques to pull back the alienating Hindu votes, this is why she has constructed a duplicate temple at Digha and challenged the very grace and greatness of the Lord who resides at the Puri temple — one of the four Dhams of Hindu religion. She will get a befitting reply for challenging and playing with Hindu Sanatani religion,” Adhikari had earlier said.
Adhikari also attacked the Chief Minister for “destroying democracy in Bengal much like what was done during the Emergency.”
While the Bengal Government refused to celebrate the Samvidhan Hatya Diwas (murder of democracy day) as advised by the central Government Adhikari said “It is the same person who is now ruling Bengal, who had mounted the bonnet of Jaya Prakash Narayan’s car in Kolkata and danced on it when he came here during Emergency, so they are a party to the destruction of democracy which is why they are not observing this ‘Black Day.”
Referring to “the murder of democracy everyday in Bengal, where the MLAs are attacked and beaten up inside the Assembly, where the Opposition has no place to express their views, where the membes of the opposition parties are murdered and their properties looted every day,” Adhikari said, “Bengal is the ideal case of destruction of democracy.”
Senior BJP leader Dilip Ghosh too criticised the Chief Minister for “using State funds for constructing temples and splurging tax-payers’ money for religious words which she is not authorised to do.”
TMC quickly hit back at the BJP leadership even as State Trinamool Congress vice president JP Majumdar said “we will not take lessons of religion from the saffron outfit, particularly Suvendu Adhikari who is using religion so blatantly as none else had done in Bengal, he is destroying the renaissance culture of the State.”
TMC spokesperson Debangshu Bhattacharya said, “taking lessons from Suvendu Adhikari on democratic institutions is not only shameful but also laughable … this is the same person who grew with the TMC and then to save himself from corruption charges fell at the feet of Amit Shah … he now represents the party that banished all the opposition members from Parliament and got anti-people bills passed.”
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister on Wednesday set off for Digha where she would personally supervise the preparations of the Rath Yatra on June 27 and pull the ropes of the grand Chariot of the Lord, sources said.