A day after Centre slammed the Trinamool Congress Government for blocking Indo-Bangladesh trade which was reopened a few days ago the Bengal ruling outfit on Thursday came out all guns blazing against the BJP Government for opening the border trade with the neighbouring country risking lives millions of in this part of the border in a pandemic situation.
Attacking the BJP for “trying to play politics with cadavers” to gain political mileage before the next year’s State elections Minister Rajiv Banerjee and senior leader Samir Chakrabarty said the saffron outfit only wanted to win the elections and had no respect for the people of Bengal.
“BJP as a party is anti-Bengal. It has no love or respect for our State or its people. It is in search of dead bodies so as to play politics over them... The border with Bangladesh has been opened because they want the locals to get infected by the people coming from the other side ... so that they can play accuse Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the rising number of deaths,” said the leaders in a 1video press conference adding “with its rich political heritage Bengal has never seen a party that trades in cadavers. BJP is an anti-Bengal party.”
Attacking the BJP-led Centre for targeting Bengal “because they want to the people’s gallery to win political points an year ahead of the State elections,” the TMC leaders said “the Centre should have focused on the BJP-ruled States like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh where the situation is far worse than Bengal... Still they are targeting out State because they want political mileage.
Earlier the Home Ministry had written to the State Government for failing to comply with its orders facilitating the trans-border trade.
In his letter Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said, “the unilateral action on the part of the West Bengal government to stop the cross land border movement of essential goods would have larger implications for the Indian government with regard to its legally binding international commitments....
“This act of the state government ... amounts to violation of the orders issued by the MHA under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 as well as articles 253, 256 and 257 of the Constitution of India.”
Regarding the alleged poor management of the corona situation in Bengal the MHA wrote the response to the corona situation was “characterised by a very low rate of testing in proportion to the population, and a very high rate of mortality of 13.2 per cent for the state, by far the highest for any state” adding how it was a “reflection of poor surveillance, detection and testing in the state. There is also a need to increase random testing in crowded clusters.
The letter written to State Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha said “Lockdown violations have been noted in the cities of Kolkata and Howrah by specific groups in specific localities with media reports of the ‘corona warriors’ including even the police being attacked.”
It also drew reference to the “instances of problems faced due to ostracism of health care professionals and lack of quarantine facilities.”