Centre Spars With West Bengal Over Attack On JP Nadda's Convoy
By A Special Correspondent
First publised on 2020-12-12 05:56:24
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The Centre has summoned West Bengal chief secretary and DGP to Delhi to inquire into the attack on BJP president JP Nadda's convoy near Diamond Harbour in the state. This is after the state governor Jagdeep Dhankhar has already sought a report from these officers and submitted his own report to the Centre. Hence, it is obvious that the Centre is not satisfied with the replies given by the said officers. They have been asked to report to the Union home secretary on Monday. But West Bengal chief secretary has once again submitted a detailed report to the Union home secretary and has asked to be excused from reporting in person. This is in line with the stand taken by the Trinamool Congress, which is in power in the state, that the Centre's action in summoning the officers is mala fide and that the incident was "stage-managed" by the BJP to give the party a bad name.
Both sides are adopting an extreme stance in the issue. It is not a secret that opposition party workers and leaders, especially those from the BJP, are increasingly being targeted in West Bengal. Political violence is on the rise in the state and the governor has repeatedly issued warnings to the state administration to take steps to curb it. In fact, Jhankar claims he had warned the administration before Nadda's visit that there might be violence directed at the BJP leader. In such a situation, it was the state administration's duty to take all steps to ensure that Nadda could carry out his engagements freely. The incident at Diamond Harbour (which was earlier a CPM bastion but has now been taken over by the TMC), represented in the Lok Sabha by chief minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, did seem pre-planned but TMC's allegation of BJP's hand in the incident seems farfetched. The BJP does not have a strong presence in the area and outsiders would have been easily identified and nabbed by locals if they had tried anything as big as attacking a convoy. The state administration should identify the culprits and take action as per law instead of trying to blame the BJP for it. It should also give space to the opposition to campaign freely and curb incidents of political violence with a strong hand.
On its part, the Centre should desist from overplaying the incident by summoning the top officers of the state to Delhi. The governor and the chief secretary of the state have already submitted their independent reports on the incident. The MHA can direct the state administration to take steps as warranted, identify and arrest the culprits and take action as per law. It can also direct the state administration to ensure that such incidents are not repeated. It was a serious lapse on the part of the state administration that it ignored warnings and did not take steps to prevent an incident like the one that happened. If the BJP, as alleged by the TMC, is trying to stage manage these incidents (there was an incident of violence at a college during Amit Shah's road show in Kolkata some months back in which the TMC had blamed 'outsiders' brought in by the BJP to have started it), it is upon the TMC to take steps to prevent the BJP from giving the state administration a bad name.
