Names of an 85-member committee formed by the central government to celebrate the 125th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have been made public.
But the absence of anyone from the Forward Bloc, a party founded by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1939, raised eyebrows. “The central government was either afraid that we might refuse to be a part of this committee since it is headed by a PM who belongs to a communal party or they are scared of the questions we might raise in case we are included,” said Naren Chatterjee, FB state general secretary.
Chatterjee added that Netaji stood for a secular India and his life’s work represented his determination to put in place a people’s government.
“The BJP is a communal party. It is also trying snatch away the rights of the common man and empower the corporate sector. They don’t have any right to celebrate Netaji,” he added.
Modi apart, 10 Union ministers, including Amit Shah, Board of Control for Cricket in India boss Sourav Ganguly, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and six other chief of states, former Bengal CM Buddhedeb Bhattacharjee, former Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and H.D. Deve Gowda, BJP Bengal chief Dilip Ghosh, Trinamul turncoats Suvendu Adhikari and Sunil Mondol, actors Mithun Chakraborty and Kajol, music composer A.R. Rahman and filmmaker Kaushik Ganguli are among those who feature on the list.
Several Bengal politicians, including those from the BJP that this paper spoke to said including Trinamul turncoats meant that the panel was formed with a political aim.
A state BJP leader said that the list called Suvendu an MLA though he resigned as a legislator before switching over to the BJP. “Even if I consider that Suvenduda’s name was included as an MLA, what wrong did the MLAs who had originally won on a BJP ticket do?” this person asked, underlining the existing inner feud between BJP old-timers and Trinamul turncoats.
The issue brought arch-rivals CPM and Trinamul on the same page, with representatives from both criticising the omission of Forward Bloc.
“It was important to have representation from the party Netaji had himself founded, in a committee set up to commemorate his birth anniversary,” said Left legislative party leader and CPM MLA Sujan Chakraborty.
Trinamul MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy said that the absence of any representation of the FB in the committee only showed that BJP central leaders were unaware of Bengal’s history.
“They earlier said that Rabindranath Tagore was born in Visva-Bharati. To not include FB in this committee is a punishable offence,” Roy said.
As the state government recently unveiled mega plants to celebrate Netaji's birthday, it was not clear whether Mamata would accept the offer to be a member of the committee.