Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday launched an acerbic attack at the Bharatiya Janata Party at an event to unveil a new statue of Bengal reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar that was vandalized during the Lok Sabha elections.
“Bengal is not a toy. You cannot play with it. You cannot do anything you want with Bengal,” the chief minister said at the event also attended by Trinamool Congress leaders, Bengal ministers and some spiritual leaders.
But the message was aimed at the BJP and the national coalition that it leads in Delhi. The BJP had made wide inroads into Bengal, scoring 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats. The win is also seen as a setback for the Trinamool Congress chief who was once seen to be aspiring for a role in national politics.
The 19th century reformer statue that she unveiled replaces the one that was broken into pieces during clashes that took place around the time BJP president Amit Shah was holding a roadshow in Kolkata.
Mamata Banerjee and her government accuses the BJP of vandalizing the statue, a charge that BJP boss Amit Shah has denied in the past.
As the chief minister again hurled the accusation at BJP chief Amit Shah on Tuesday, she insisted that her government had “all the documents” to establish its allegation and asked why the vandalism happened in the rally of a person who has now become the country’s home minister.
First Published:
Jun 11, 2019 15:01 IST
Source: HindustanTimes