West Bengal CM Suvendu releases 1993 firing report ahead of TMC rally

In a damaging development that could hurt the very purpose of observing the Trinamool Congress’ Martyrs’ Day by the Mamata Banerjee faction of the Trinamool Congress, Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Monday disclosed the long-pending report of the Justice Sushanta Chattopadhyay Commission.

The report incidentally comes just on the eve of the TMC’s observance of the 33rd Martyrs’ Day rally on July 21 and threatens to challenge Mamata Banerjee’s moral right to politically exploit the day, experts said.

According to the report presented before the Assembly, the police firing on Youth Congress demonstrators on July 21, 1993, killing 13 persons, was legally unwarranted.

The report said that the firing was carried out on the instructions of the then Home Secretary Manish Gupta. Instead of taking action against Gupta after becoming the Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee not only sent him to Parliament but also made him a Cabinet Minister in his Government, post 2011.

The report had thus far been kept under the carpet by the previous TMC Government notwithstanding its annual observance of the TMC Martyrs’ Day rally, when the kin of the deceased were honoured from the dais.

Chief Minister Adhikari also released the names of the 44 witnesses who were summoned by the Commission. Mamata Banerjee, who had always claimed to be a witness to the firing, however, was not summoned by the Commission.

Referring to the reports, the Chief Minister said: “Many people extracted benefits from the July 21 movement, some rose in power, some acquired status to go abroad, but the people of Bengal still do not know as to what really happened that day.”

Mamata Banerjee, who carved out her new outfit in 1998, was the president of the Youth Congress in 1993 and had led the rally, leading about a lakh of people towards the State secretariat at Writers’ Buildings to press for her demands for EPIC cards for voting apart from pressuring the Jyoti Basu Government to step down. The skirmish that followed apparently led to police firing.

Meanwhile, all eyes were on the July 21 rally to be organised by all the rival factions of the TMC on Tuesday.