The BJP has termed Mamata Banerjee’s decision to send Trinamool Congress’ fact-finding teams to the BJP-ruled States wherever there is a law and order problem as an expression of nervousness against the growing prowess of the saffron outfit in Bengal.
Reacting sharply to the Trinamool supremo’s decision to “catch the bull by its horns” by retaliating against the saffron party “in equal measures and in the same way”, BJP leader and the party’s Central Observer for Bengal Siddharth Nath Singh said that Banerjee was acting unlike a Chief Minister.Her decision betrays ‘nervousness’, Singh who had earlier said that the BJP was looking towards bringing a second poribortan in Bengal in 2016 State elections, said. She is “reacting rather than acting as a Chief Minister”, he maintained.
“It only shows Mamata Banerjee’s nervousness about the rise of the BJP in Bengal. She should take steps to improve the deteriorating law and order situation in Bengal” instead of taking such futile measures, he added.Banerjee had earlier decided to send a team of MPs including Sukhendu Shekhar Roy, Arpita Ghosh, Uma Soren, Nadimul Haq and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar to Bhiali Kheda Village of Madhya Pradesh where a woman was allegedly raped and paraded naked.
Curiously Dastidar is the same MP who had reacted to the infamous Park Street rape case of Kolkata saying the incident was not a rape but one that resulted from the “differences between a woman and her client.”The Chief Minister’s decision to dispatch a team of MPs to Madhya Pradesh late this month came in the wake of two successive visits of Central BJP leaders to Bengal where the saffron workers suffered at the hands of the TMC.
In the first instance, a team led by Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and SS Ahluwalia visited Sandesh-khali in North 24 Parganas where 23 people were injured when they were fired at “with an apparent intention of maiming them” by Trinamool goons.In the second case, a team led by BJP vice-president Balbir Punj and Kirti Jha Azad visited Ilambazar of Birbhum district where SK Rahim, a saffron worker was hacked to death again by Trinamool men.
The hype generated by the two successive visits of the saffron delegation irked Banerjee to the point of her telling: I feel that from now on if there is any incident in any BJP-ruled State we will also send a Trinamool Congress team there because it cannot be one-sided affair. They will get just as they do. Tit for tat.”
Meanwhile, the Trinamool on Tuesday observed a ‘Black Day’ in Bengal protesting ‘frequent killing of our workers by the CPI(M) and the BJP.” Five Trinamool men have died in the past one week following alleged inter-party rivalries.