BJP accuses Mamata for Malda riot in West Bengal

[Riyad]

BJP highlights Malda riots' 'truth' with five questions for Mamata
Last Updated: Monday, January 11, 2016 - 14:13

Zee Media Bureau

Kolkata: Hours after its three-member delegation was detained and sent back without their planned visit to violence-torn Malda district, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday levelled serious allegations against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Accusing Mamata Banerjee of failing to control violence at Kaliachak despite reports about brewing tension in advance, BJP senior leader Siddharth Nath Singh on Monday indicated that Kaliachak police station was attacked to destroy records about opium farming and fake currency racket in the area.

He also said the three party MPs - SS Ahluwalia, BD Ram and Bhupender Yadav, who were part of the BJP's delegation to Malda, will meet the President and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh after returning to Delhi.

Singh said the BJP is posing five questions before Mamata Banerjee:


1. The incident (Malda violence) happened on January 3. Leaflets, pamphlets and other publicity materials were being openly distributed in the area in advance to provoke the communal flare. Then why did state government failed to take precautionary measures and curb the violence on time?


2. Mamata govt is calling Malda violence a reaction to a provocative statement against Prophet Muhammad made one month ago. So why was this reaction after a gap of one month? It was not a reaction but a planned action.


3. Mamata Banerjee is saying the violence was between locals and BSF. If it was so, then why the mob attacked police station? They should have attacked or gathered at BSF posts.


4. NIA has been working on the investigation into Malda fake currency racket. More than 50 persons have been arrested in the past and most of them were from Malda. NIA was in touch with West Bengal govt to burst this racket. There were crucial records at Kaliachak police station which was attacked by the mob.


5. There is widespread opium farming taking place in Malda. Aren't the state government and police aware of it? Why is West Bengal govt sleeping over it?
Opium farming here leads to fake currency rackets and other anti-national activities. This is why the police station which had crucial information regarding these cases was attacked.

BJP highlights Malda riots' 'truth' with five questions for Mamata | Zee News

 

[SarthakGanguly]

@rainman @MilSpec
Is this a picture of West Bengal? I mean the placards are in Hindi...

 

[ranjeet]

@rainman @MilSpec
Is this a picture of West Bengal? I mean the placards are in Hindi...

from UP most probably that's where it all started.

 

[SarthakGanguly]

from UP most probably that's where it all started.

Strange. They traveled all the way from UP to Bihar to WB to riot and the WB police still got a beating?
Well, not a beating, they were not in the scene if the reports are to be believed.

 

[Skull and Bones]

@rainman @MilSpec
Is this a picture of West Bengal? I mean the placards are in Hindi...

The first one is from Bengal, can't confirm about the other two.

 

[ranjeet]

Strange. They traveled all the way from UP to Bihar to WB to riot and the WB police still got a beating?
Well, not a beating, they were not in the scene if the reports are to be believed.

Nah picture is from muzzafarnagar or some other town in UP.

 

[Riyad]

Malda and Ghulam Ali concert: The hypocrisy of Mamata Banerjee's secularism
by Sreemoy Talukdar Jan 13, 2016 20:48 IST

As Ghulam Ali started Dil Mein Ek Lehar Si Uthi Hai Abhi in his revered baritone in a Kolkata auditorium, somewhere in a little town in Bengal's border district, the administration was busy wiping off evidence of violence that threatens to scar Trinamool Congress' bid to win a second consecutive term in Assembly elections.

No one, though, can accuse Mamata Banerjee of not trying.


West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee honours Ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali at a programme in Kolkata on Tuesday. PTI

So when the Ustad, after vowing not to visit India again till 'the time is right', responded to her call and landed in Kolkata on Swami Vivekananda's 153rd birth anniversary, the West Bengal chief minister sought to deliver a triple whammy.

Before a packed Netaji Indoor Stadium on Tuesday night, a beaming Mamata took a dig at those opposed to the Pakistani ghazal maestro's India visit and announced Bengal as the seat of secularism in India.

“This is the land of Rabindranath Tagore, Paramhansa Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das. Ghulam Aliji, you are always welcome here and will have to come again and again,” she said in Urdu.

“Swami Vivekananda preached tolerance and today is his birthday. The world is one and we cannot live without tolerance,” she said, even reciting a Urdu couplet to driver home her point.

By harping on 'tolerance' in the backdrop of a huge cut-out of Swami Vivekananda, Mamata attempted to send three messages.

One, by choosing Swamiji's birth anniversary as the date for the Ustad's ghazal performance, Mamata attempted to send out a message to the RSS, who has never hidden its admiration for the ascetic, philosopher and reformer who is credited with Hindu spiritual reawakening in the late 19th and early 20th century.

This was Mamata's way of saying to the RSS, "lay your hands off Swamiji and don't try to appropriate his legacy".
Two, in the curious machinations of how a government functions, the ghazal function was ostensibly organised by three departments — youth affairs, information and culture, and department of minority affairs and madrasah education. The latter, however, was at the forefront, micro-managing the event and even handing out the invitation cards. The message, once again, of the chief minister reaching out to a certain community before the Assembly polls was not to be missed.

Three, by inviting Ghulam Ali, whose concert in Mumbai was cancelled in November last year when Shiv Sena threatened to disrupt it — and making him perform before a packed auditorium — the Bengal CM was trying to score an obvious political point rather than showcasing her appreciation of art and music.

As Ghulam Ali compared Mamata to Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of wisdom and music, and started with "Nafraton ke teer khakar, doston ke sahar mein…" before belting out numerous popular numbers, Mamata — who has never shied away from revealing her national ambitions — put clear daylight between herself and other claimants to India's "secular throne", including the likes of Arvind Kejriwal and Nitish Kumar.

However, well might the chief minister invoke Tagore, Bose or Vivekananda to bolster her claims of being a secular leader, it is doubtful whether the stalwarts — had they been around — would have approved of the way her administration has sought to handle the now infamous Kaliachak incident in Malda.

Whether or not the violence was stoked by communal fire or a mafia backlash against police action on illegal poppy cultivation, organising a ghazal jamboree does not absolve the chief minister of massive failure in maintaining law and order in a volatile area, more so when her administration had clear inkling that trouble may brew on 3 January when Anjuman Ahle Sunnatul Jamaat had called for a massive protest march against a Hindu Mahasabha leader’s offensive comments on Prophet Muhammad.

Given Kaliachak's volatility, the fact that the rally had communal undertones and was held with prior permission from the police, questions are bound to be raised why there was so few police presence that the cops on duty had to literally flee for their lives when the mob attacked the police station and reportedly torched incriminating documents.

Amid reports that the goons had also burnt down several vehicles, shot at an RSS activist and then set alight a few houses and shops in Baliadanga, a locality where mostly Hindus live, the state government, ironically, is guilty of abdicating its responsibilities towards the minorities — in this case the Hindus who form only around 10 percent of the population in Kaliachak block.

also see

• 
  
  Two months after saying he'll never come back to India, Ghulam Ali will perform in Kolkata
  
  
• 
  
  Party workers want to forge alliance with CPI(M): Bengal Congress chief
  
  
• 
  
  Violence in Mamata's Bengal: What Rajnath Singh will have to deal with in the tinder box that is Malda
  

What followed the Kaliachak violence was equally curious. According to a report in The Indian Express, the police station, which was ransacked on 3 January, has been renovated at the speed of lightning.

None of the damaged vehicles could be seen within its compound, broken doors and windows have been replaced with new ones.

The damaged building has been repaired and given a fresh coat of paint. The trees, which were burnt, have been chopped off. Bright lights have also been put up and the road in front of the police station, which was earlier used as a thoroughfare, has been shut.

While the state government continues to maintain "everything is normal in Malda", it has repeatedly blocked all rival parties from visiting the area, be it the BJP's fact-finding team, the CPM delegation led by Md Salim or state Congress chief Adhir Chowdhury.

Malda may not alter the course of Bengal politics in the upcoming Assembly polls which the TMC is widely expected to win, but the way Mamata Banerjee has tried to first deflect the blame on BSF and then later tried to audaciously brush everything under the carpet hoping that things would die down on its own, puts in sharp doubt the secular credentials which she sought to forcefully portray on Tuesday night during Ghulam Ali concert.

Malda and Ghulam Ali concert: The hypocrisy of Mamata's secularism - Firstpost