West Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu on Tuesday deplored stone pelting incidents at Howrah-New Jalpaiguri Vande Bharat Express, and said it should not be unnecessarily politicised to tarnish any state's image.

Safety of the train is important, Basu said adding that if a train meets with an accident, none should ask which state the driver belongs to.

"It is not important to me in which state such (stone-throwing) incidents have taken place. I think this incident should not have happened at all," he said on the sidelines of a programme.

On January 3 and 4, the Howrah-New Jalpaiguri Vande Bharat Express was pelted with stones. The second incident had happened in Bihar while the BJP and a section of the media claimed that it took place in West Bengal.

The Trinamul Congress of West Bengal claimed that the assertion has given a bad name to the state.

“We should have faith in the administration. But some people in West Bengal are politicising this incident. This should stop,” Basu, a noted actor-director of plays and films, said.

He said the incident and chain of events reminded him of the film ‘Babel’.

In the 2006 multi-language movie, two young brothers in Morocco, while testing the range of a rifle, fire at a bus full of Western tourists injuring an American woman. The USA described the incident as a terrorist act and asks the Moroccan government to arrest the culprits.

Basu, a Trinamool Congress MLA, also said he "could not see for long" the controversial movie ‘The Kashmir Files’, which is based on the exodus of Kashmiri Pundits from the valley during militancy in the early 1990s.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has come out with a list of 301 feature films eligible for Oscars with 'The Kashmir Files' and four other Indian movies making the cut.

"I could not see The Kashmir Files for long. I came out of the hall. I was having problems," Basu said without elaborating.

He later told PTI that a person has the right to watch a film he likes and it was entirely his decision.

To another question, Basu said there is an attempt to muzzle the voice of artistic freedom in the country at present.

"This is akin to the Stalinist doctrine which we had witnessed in our state in the past," he said, apparently referring to the previous Left Front regime in West Bengal.