Clearly indicating that his Government will accord equal importance to the minorities of all hues and shades irrespective of their religious or linguistic status, Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Sunday lambasted the previous Mamata Banerjee dispensation for her policy of “undue” appeasement of the Muslim population.
“Minority does not mean only Muslims … rather people of religious congregations including the Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains too enjoy the minority status … a principle that was completely ignored by the previous Trinamool Congress Government,” the Chief Minister said.
The Chief Minister, who earlier visited the Gurudwara Bara Sikh Sangat where he greeted the Sikh community for their “supreme sacrifices” said, “the Sikhs are truly patriots and we have always held them in high regard … and they too enjoy the minority status which the previous Government forgot,” adding how the Mamata Banerjee Government was only concerned about the Muslim community only. Adhikari, whose Government this year round made extensive preparations for the Chhath Puja in Bengal and particularly in Kolkata said minorities of all kinds should be given their due place in the society.
Following special instructions from the State Government the Police and municipal bodies prepared river ghats, with the Chief Minister and his other ministerial colleagues like Urban Development Minister Agnimitra Paul personally inspecting Kolkata’s ghats via waterway.
Earlier iterating that his Government would not tolerate divisive appeasement politics in the name of religion, caste and language, Adhikari slammed the TMC Government for drawing hedges among linguistic communities. The previous rulers always sought to divide the Sanatanis in the name of language, thus “portraying the linguistic minorities from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and other places as outsiders,” whereas according undue hospitality to the illegal immigrants who came from Bangladesh because they had to be used as “pawns in their vote bank politics.”
Adhikari’s remarks were, however strongly refuted by the Mamata Trinamool Congress with its senior leader and MLA Kunal Ghosh attacking the Chief Minister for “heaping blames on others for which he only should be charged with.”
Defending Banerjee’s record as being a strong champion of unity of religions and culture, Ghosh said, “it is the present BJP Government, including the Chief Minister who have been engaging in divisive politics… They cried hoarse about so called ‘ghuspathiyas’ (illegal migrants) but how many of the one crore names that were struck out from electoral rolls eventually turned out to be ghuspathiyas … all those slogans were raised to perpetrate their divisive politics and now they are accusing the TMC of being divisive … people are watching and they will give a befitting reply.”