Cops lathicharge workers, lob tear gas shells, resort to water cannons
Ahead of forthcoming Assembly elections in Bengal, BJP leaders on Thursday engaged in a pitched battle with State police that led to over hundred injuries and multiple arrests, including those of senior saffron leaders.
In what the critics termed a well thought out tactic to provoke and trigger Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee into frontal street fights, the Yuva Morcha — the youth arm of the Bengal BJP — led a four-pronged march to Nabanna, the State Secretariat, from four points of Kolkata and Howrah.
Though State BJP president Dilip Ghosh and Yuva Morcha national president Tejaswi Surya claimed, the “police launched an unprovoked
lathcharge on democratically peaceful protesters leading to more than 100 injuries,” the clashes evidently erupted when the crowds tried to force their way to Nabanna after being blockaded away by the administration at various junctions.
Subsequently, the police said 113 people were arrested during the march. The BJP, however, said about 500 people, including senior leader Kailash Vijayvargiya, were arrested.
Among the arrested persons was one Balwinder Singh, a BJP worker who was carrying a gun, police said. Dilip Ghosh, however, said Singh was a personal security guard of a BJP State committee member who had a licensed gun.
The Assembly polls are likely to be held in April-May explaining the gradual hotting up of the political situation.
The Thursday’s commotion started when stones were pelted at the police at Hastings area in southern Kolkata and Santragachi and Howrah Maidan where bombs were exploded leading the police to fire tear gas shells and lathicharge the crowds, sources said.
Water cannons spraying coloured water — subsequently interpreted by State Chief Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay as “water mixed with holi colours to identify the protesters for further action post dispersal” — were too used on the crowd.
In the melee, a number of BJP leaders including Arvind Menon and Raju Banerjee were injured. The duo including many others had to be hospitalised. Surya condemned “Mamata Banerjee’s police” for uniting with the TMC goons to attack the protesters who were marching for legitimate causes.
The “Nabanna Chalo” march was called to protest against the alleged “corruption and syndicate raj of the Mamata Banerjee Government which has triggered massive unemployment in the State.”
In a subsequent briefing, Surya said, “We are fighting against the most corrupt and criminalised Government of the country,” adding “the way the police suppressed a democratically hosted rally on Thursday it would go do down in the history as a black day.”
Explaining why only about 20-odd thousand people had turned up in the march, Dilip Ghosh complained how the buses carrying the BJP workers were stopped at various toll plazas outside Kolkata.
He demanded investigation into how dark blue-coloured water was sprayed on the people that gave burning sensation on the skins.” The State Government, however, came out with a different explanation saying holi colour was used to identify the protesters for future action.
With Nabanna closed for two days for reported sanitisation work and the Chief Minister out on an official trip to Jangalmahal, the BJP workers staged a sit-in near her Kalighat residence from where they were promptly evicted by the police, sources said.
Meanwhile, even as the Left dismissed the Thursday’s skirmish as a fight for power between two corrupt, “communal, blood thirsty, capitalist outfits,” State Minister Firhad Hakim said, “BJP is not taken seriously in Bengal as it is a party of extremists.”