In an intriguing development that many a political outfit called a “conspiracy being hatched against Bengal,” the State BJP leaders including MLAs and MPs on Thursday used the stage from where Union Home Minister Amit Shah was to deliver a public speech to raise the demand for a separate State of Uttar Banga.
Addressing the audience the BJP’s Naxalbari MLA said that North Bengal continued to remain subdued whereas South Bengal took away all the cream of development. He demanded steps to reassure the people of that area.
“It has been the story from years that all development takes place inSouth Bengal … even the summer vacation in schools are decided according to the weather in that part of the State … hurt by the deprivation and sense of alienation there is a voice coming from the people for some separate State,” the Naxalbari MLA said wondering “why if Uttarakhand can be separated from UP … Chhattisgarh can be takenout from MP and Laddakh can be separated from J&K a separate State ofNorth Bengal cannot be created here … the people have a strong demand for it.”
Another BJP MLA Krishna Chatterjee too said that “a time has come when some separate arrangement must be made to assuage the feeling of the people.” Backing the demand of the MLAs former State BJP president and the party’s national vice president Dilip Ghosh said “there is a strong demand for a separate State coming from the people of the region because there has been no development here … why the people of this part of the State should continue to languish in backwardness … if a demand for a separate State is coming from them it seems quite justified.” Curiously Ghosh also a BJP MP from South Bengal had earlier said that a separate State of North Bengal was not in the official agenda of hisparty.
“The BJP as a party does not support separate North Bengal,” he had told hours before his Siliguri speech. Even as the other opposition parties gave out strong reactions Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that “BJP was out to engineer divorces wherever they went … they are driving wedge between Hindus and Muslims, between Bengalis and non-Bengalis, between Bengalis and Bengalis and now between North Bengal and South Bengal … but they should rest assured nothing of that sort will be allowed to happen.”
CPI(M)’s Sujan Chakrabarty said “both TMC and BJP leaders are playing a dangerous game for their personal gains … this narrow politics may have far reaching consequences and prolonged disturbance which should be discouraged and avoided immediately.”