If once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and the third time it’s enemy action, Amit Shah should first rope in Auric Goldfinger before courting Trinamul turncoats so that the mischief-makers can be ferreted out well in advance.

Like James Bond’s annoying habit of turning up at unlikely places that prompted Goldfinger to reprise the Chicago saying, a cultural disconnect is doggedly chasing the BJP in Bengal.

A display board welcoming Shah to Bolpur and Santiniketan triggered protests on Friday as it had placed a sketch of Rabindranath Tagore below that of the Union home minister.

The flex also sports the picture of BJP leader Anupam Hazra. It had been put up by a little-known organisation called the Bolpur-Santiniketan Sanskriti Vikash Samity.

Scheduled to visit Santiniketan on Sunday, Shah has lined up a series of programmes to underscore the BJP’s cultural connect with Bengal after a series of missteps, including a gaffe on Tagore’s birthplace last week when the party’s national president J.P. Nadda was in Bengal.

On Friday, several flexes featuring Shah above Tagore were put up at multiple places in Bolpur and Santiniketan, drawing widespread condemnation from those associated with Visva-Bharati and the BJP’s political opponents. Such was the backlash that the display boards were withdrawn in a few hours.

Angry over the “insult to Tagore”, present and former students of Visva-Bharati organised a rally on Friday evening. Old-timers at Santiniketan too flayed the BJP for the “unpardonable” and “unfortunate” incident.

“Very unfortunate that Tagore’s image had been placed below that of a political leader. There was no need to use the image of Tagore,” said Supriya Tagore, a former Patha Bhavana principal and a member of the Tagore family.

Trinamul Congress tweeted: “@AmitShah ji & @BJP4Bengal, it’s high time you know your limits! How dare you insult Gurudeb Rabindranath Tagore AGAIN? Extremely shameful to see that you have placed yourself above Gurudeb! People of Bengal will NEVER forgive this.”

Hazra, however, saw in the incident a Trinamul attempt to malign the BJP.

“We can never think of placing anyone above Tagore. The flexes had been put up by a fictitious organisation to malign our party,” said Hazra, a BJP national secretary, who was earlier with Trinamul.

Trinamul’s Birbhum district chief Anubrata Mondal denied Hazra’s allegation and said the flexes had revealed the BJP’s lack of reverence for Tagore and Bengali culture.