Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari on Saturday slammed the state government for organising the Puja carnival on Red Road after Wednesday’s flash foods claimed eight lives in Jalpaiguri’s Malbazar during Durga idol immersions, before justifying the demand for statehood for north Bengal.
“If it had happened in Babughat or any other river bank in Calcutta, Mamata Banerjee would have cancelled the carnival. She will engage in festivities only because the incident took place in north Bengal,” Adhikari said.
“This is why people of north Bengal... demand a separate state or Union territory. Anyone compassionate won’t participate in this huge waste of public money in the name of Mamata’s carnival,” he added.
Some BJP MPs and MLAs from north Bengal have so far fanned the issue of a separate north Bengal state or Union territory.
Some others like national vice-president Dilip Ghosh have not openly called for a separate state, but argued that the demand was justified and linked it to the “years of negligence of the region” at the hands of a “Calcutta-centric administration”.
In May this year, two BJP MLAs of north Bengal — Anandamoy Barman of Matigara-Naxalbari and Shikha Chatterjee of Dabgram-Fulbari — had raised the issue at a meeting with Union home minister Amit Shah, in Siliguri. Shah was also vocal about the deprivations people in north Bengal buffer. Officially, however, the party has maintained it is in favour of an undivided Bengal.
However, after the Malbazar tragedy, all Opposition parties — the BJP, the CPM, and the Congress — had urged the Trinamul-led state government to call off the puja carnival in Calcutta. The administration decided to go ahead with it anyway.
“This is the kind of insensitivity and inhumane politics that Mamata Banerjee represents,” CPM state secretary Md Salim lashed out. He also slammed Adhikari’s “brand of divisive politics”, saying it “doesn’t allow him to be human”. “He must first answer why the National Disaster Response Force (under the Union home ministry) was so late in responding on Wednesday. They would have been quick had the accident taken place in (BJP-ruled) Uttarakhand. Why were they slacking in north Bengal?”
Congress MP and Bengal chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury also dubbed the state government's decision to go ahead with the carnival as insensitive.
Adhikari, through a tweet, alleged that Calcutta police instructed by DCP South Akash Magharia had removed the protesting job-seekers from in front of the statue of Matangini Hazra in Calcutta to make way for the carnival.
Congress leader and advocate Koustav Bagchi met the demonstrators in solidarity. Bagchi told this newspaper that the protesters will return on Sunday.
