Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday accused the BJP of bringing in armed hooligans from outside Bengal to try and foment tension during its march to state secretariat Nabanna on Tuesday, before complimenting police for displaying “maximum restraint” in a situation where they could have “opened fire” at “violent protesters”.
The chief minister, during an administrative review meeting at Nimtouri in Tamluk, East Midnapore, condemned the violence allegedly perpetrated by the BJP.
“Two years of disruption in trade and commerce because of Covid-19. Then this. Such a lot of economic activity, trade and commerce, was destroyed by them yesterday (Tuesday). The common people were tremendously harassed,” said Mamata.
“Yes, if the police wanted to, they could have opened fire. But that is not desirable. The police tried their best, showing maximum restraint, to manage things peacefully,” the chief minister added, referring to the instances of violence on Tuesday in which BJP protesters engaged in fisticuffs with the police, allegedly threw stones at the cops, and torched at least one police vehicle. The law enforcers also resorted to baton-charge and water cannons to disperse the mob in various places.
“So many police personnel had been attacked brutally by the participants in their (BJP) rally. So many police personnel are injured. (Calcutta police’s assistant commissioner) Debjit (Chatterjee) was mercilessly beaten up. He needs surgery. Despite that, the police did not open fire,” she said.
Sources close to the chief minister said she was “proud” of how the police denied the BJP an opportunity to find “a martyr or two” during the events of Tuesday.
They said she underscored how this was a key difference between police conduct in the Trinamul regime and that in BJP-ruled states or Bengal during the Left era.
The Trinamul Congress chief said there could be no tolerance of the BJP’s alleged bringing of people from outside Bengal to cause disruption in the name of political programmes in the state.
“This cannot go on, renting trains, bringing people from other states… brick-pelting, hurling bombs, triggering violence from inside railway properties. A lot of police personnel were injured yesterday (Tuesday). They (the BJP) had brought some people with the sole purpose of hooliganism,” Mamata said.
“Nobody is stopping them (the BJP) from democratic movements, everybody has that right in a democratic country. But bringing bombs and guns in bags in the name of a movement, cracking people’s heads, that is not right. I wish everyone injured a speedy recovery,” she added.
On Tuesday, while the march was still on, Mamata had told party colleagues in a closed-door meeting in Kharagpur that the BJP’s “balloon had run out of gas”.
She called the saffron event a “flop show”, and asserted that there was no point in paying much importance to the BJP in Bengal.
On Wednesday, Mamata vowed stern action against those responsible for violence during the programme.
“Those responsible for these things, the violence, the arson, the ransacking… anti-social activities do not go with politics. Police will take action, the law will take its own course…. Stern action would be initiated, as it should,” Mamata said.
The BJP had given a call for a march to Nabanna on Tuesday to protest against the Trinamul dispensation’s “corruption in all spheres” and had billed the event as the first major movement to wrest the seat of power in Bengal from the ruling party.
Over 2 lakh people were supposed to march in three rallies — each starting from Howrah Maidan, College Square and Santragachi — to finally assemble at Nabanna but ultimately only 45,000 to 50,000 people had turned up, according to estimates.
