BJP leader Dilip Ghosh on Sunday added fuel to the brewing controversy of renaming India as Bharat by proclaiming that “The country would only be called Bharat and not India. Those who do not like the change can leave the country”.

Ghosh took the opportunity to spark a fresh controversy by throwing a challenge at his dissenters, “all statues of foreigners would be removed from the streets of Calcutta and elsewhere in the state when the BJP comes to power. Let those opposed to it try and stop us.”

Speaking at a gathering over a morning cup of tea in Kharagpur in West Midnapore, Ghosh said: “Those who seek India should try and search for it in Britain. There’s an India House over there where Savarkar stayed. Here, they will only find Bharat. We are changing all names across the country which are reminiscent of the Mughal, Portuguese and British rule which subjugated this country for over a thousand years. No one has the courage to stop us.”

Ghosh’s comment came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi used ‘Bharat’ as his name tag at the G20 summit on Saturday, in line with President Droupadi Murmu’s designation in her dinner invite to world leaders at the summit a day before.

Justifying the removal of statues, Ghosh continued: “There were statues of Britishers in Calcutta, a few of which still remain. We will uproot them when we come to power. Those statues have been moved inside the Victoria Memorial and that’s where they will remain. They are nothing more than museum pieces. Our boys and girls will not wake up in the morning and lay their eyes on the faces of foreigners who symbolize subjugation. We will build statues of Bhagirath and Shankaracharya in their places.”

BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar echoed Ghosh’s statements saying, “There should be no issues in calling our country Bharat. The name predates India.”

On the statue issue, differing slightly from Ghosh’s proposed action, he maintained: “The biggest statue in Calcutta is that of Lenin with whom this country has no spiritual connection. Subhas Bose had demolished a British memorial in Singapore when he set up the base of Azad Hind Fauj over there. We don’t need to demolish the existing statues. We will build bigger ones of our own heroes and the existing statues will automatically fade from prominence.”

Slamming Ghosh for his comments, CPI-M leader Sujan Chakraborty said: “The man is fast losing foothold within his own party. That’s why he is saying such things to hog media attention. He has no connection with the essence of this country. This country has a long and rich history and traditions. Such things are uttered by those who understand none of them.”

“It’s illegal to call oneself Prime Minister of Bharat without changing the Constitution. The Constitution of India makes for no such provisions which the BJP is trying to bulldoze. Those who threatened to send people to Britain should remember that their forefathers did everything in their power to sabotage the freedom struggle and brokered for British rule to remain in India. It’s only a matter of time now that people of this country will throw this dispensation out of power,” the Left leader opined.

Trinamul Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh resonated Chakraborty’s statements. “The NDA is in power in this country in phases over a substantial period of time. Why did it not think of renaming this country before? That’s because it is now jittered by the INDIA alliance. India versus Bharat is a false contradiction which is being hyped up to obfuscate the real issues that confront this nation.”

Ghosh debunked the BJP leader’s statue demolition statement calling it a desperate act of artificially heating up the political narrative in the state.