As the ruling Trinamnool Congress mounted more pre-poll attacks on the Opposition outfits barely a week before the Statewide municipal elections, the BJP bore the brunt of the attacks in the past 24 hours. A BJP panchayat member was killed by TMC goons in Hooghly district late on Monday.
Nandadulal Thakur, the lone BJP member from Kanaipur panchayat near Uttarpara, was abducted at gunpoint late on Monday by TMC men. His body was later found near Railway tracks between Sheorafuli and Diara railway station, party men said.
In another attack on Tuesday evening in south Kolkata, some 200 metres from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s house, her partymen roughed up renowned Bangla film actress-turned BJP leader Rupa Ganguli. The attackers smashed her car, brutally assaulted her driver, and a few BJP men who came to save her.
“I am in a state of shock. They would have killed me if the policemen would not have come to my rescue,” Ganguli, who acted as Draupadi in BR Chopra’s Mahabharata of the nineties, said, adding, “This will only strengthen my resolve to remove Trinamool from Bengal.” Ganguli was attacked when she was to address a poll meeting at Gopalnagar near CM’s residence.
“The Trinamool goons forcibly occupied the platform meant for a pre-scheduled meeting. When I tried to take the microphone back, they attacked me using filthiest of languages and threatened to send ‘as many boys as you want’ to my residence,” she said, adding, “Political culture in the State has descended to the lowest level.” A complaint has been lodged with the State Election Commission, sources in the BJP State unit said. Mediapersons were also attacked by the TMC men.
Hooghly had in the past one year seen bitter BJP-Trinamool clashes. Even as the TMC denied such attack, a local BJP leader Soumen Bhattcharya said, “Thakur was killed because he was a good worker and had built up a good base for the party.” His son laxman said “TMC goons killed my father because he was campaigning effectively in the neighbouring Konnangar municipality.”
Bengal was going to witness elections to 91 municipalities, including the all-important Kolkata Municipal Corporation on April 18 and 25. With about 40 per cent of voters scheduled to exercise their franchise, the civic elections were being keenly watched as “semi-finals” before the next year’s Assembly polls.
The attacks took place amid increasing hostilities throughout the State and rising clamour for central forces. Bengal has been witnessing unprecedented violence for the past one month or so with the Trinamool goons raiding the houses of rival candidates often forcing them to withdraw. The party had already won three municipalities uncontested and in many places opposition candidates had been forced withdraw their nominations.
Smaller towns like Malda, Murshidabad, Siuri, Serampore, Bansberia, Midnapore, Burdwan, Raiganj, Balurghat and even Kolkata’s satellite towns like Belgharia and Barasat had been witnessing massive violence.
Early this month two senior CPI(M) leaders - Manas Mukherjee and Subhas Mukherjee - were brutally attacked. “Never had we seen such cold horror, such violence in our State,” State Opposition leader Suryakanto Mishra earlier said, adding “The left will however resist all these descending on the street.”