The BJP and TMC are at loggerheads. (File)
Within 45 minutes of the BJP’s announcement that their fact-finding committee will look into the West Bengal Panchayat Poll violence, the TMC announced its own committee that will visit Manipur which is witnessing ethnic violence between two tribes
Around 5.15 pm on Monday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced the formation of a fact-finding team to investigate the large-scale violence in West Bengal during the three-tier Panchayat polls in the state ruled by the Trinamool Congress (TMC). Barely within 45 minutes, as if in retaliation, the TMC announced its own fact-finding committee to investigate the ethnic violence in Manipur.
BJP AT MAMATA’S DOORSTEP TO FIND FACTS
The BJP announced its decision through a press release signed by BJP’s National General Secretary Arun Singh. It says that party president JP Nadda has constituted a four-member committee “to visit violence-affected areas in West Bengal, where many people were killed in panchayat-related election violence”. The committee will not only visit, but also submit its report, as is the norm with most fact-finding committees of the BJP, to Nadda.
Unlike previous committees, this one has senior party leaders namely former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and former Mumbai Police Commissioner-turned-politician Satyapal Singh. It also has two other MPs — party Vice-President Rekha Verma and Assam MP Rajdeep Roy. While the time and date of their visit are not yet announced, BJP sources indicate they will reach Bengal by Tuesday evening.
Bengal has seen large-scale violence, from gun wielding to hurling of bombs, which has, so far, reportedly resulted in 20 deaths. More than 600 polling booths are witnessing repolling on Monday. The violence prompted Union Home Minister Amit Shah to dial BJP State President Sukanta Majumder to take stock, who on Monday thanked Nadda for deciding to send a committee to assess the situation.
TMC’s COUNTER IN MANIPUR
Within less than an hour, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) announced its own five-member fact-finding committee. This time, they are sending the team to Manipur — a BJP-ruled state that has been plagued by large-scale ethnic violence between two tribes, which has, so far, resulted in at least 125 deaths and more than 50,000 being displaced.
The TMC fact-finding committee, which comprises its leader in Rajya Sabha MP Derek O Brien, senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, its women’s wing president Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Rajya Sabha member Dola Sen and Sushmita Dev, will visit Manipur on July 14.
The TMC announced that they will “reach out to those affected and provide some healing comfort to a double-engine state the BJP has ignored over the past three months”.
The TMC took potshots at the saffron party’s claim of guaranteed development if the state and Centre are ruled by the same party, which they call the “double-engine sarkar”.
NOT THE FIRST TIME
This is not the first time the two parties are sending such committees to each other’s domains to embarrass them.
In September last year, the BJP sent a five-member committee to look into the alleged assault on its women supporters during ‘Nabanno Chalo’ — a march to the state secretariat organized by the BJP. The team had recommended a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe in their report to JP Nadda.
The TMC had then called it “political tourism”.
Similarly, the TMC sent multiple such teams to BJP-ruled states, including Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj last April, where five members of a family were allegedly murdered. They also sent a team last April to Aam Aadmi Party-ruled Delhi’s Jahangirpuri, which had witnessed a communal flare-up. The visit was believed to highlight the alleged inability of the Delhi Police, which comes under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), to prevent it.