BJP to take out ‘Save Bengal’ march in Delhi tomorrow

New Delhi: Accusing the Mamata Banerjee-led government in West Bengal of practising “politics of appeasement”, the BJP today said it would take out a “Save Bengal” march from Raj Ghat here tomorrow.

BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi attacked the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in Bengal over the recent communal clashes in Basirhat in the North 24 Parganas district, alleging that Banerjee was practising the “two-fold politics of appeasement and repression” in the state.

The saffron party had earlier claimed that Hindus were targeted in the Basirhat violence.

Lekhi claimed that the Basirhat incident was not an isolated one and referred to similar incidents of communal clashes at Kaliachak and Dhulagarh in West Bengal earlier.

The New Delhi MP alleged that the TMC government had also not allowed the immersion of Durga idols in the state on the scheduled day.

“What we see in Bengal is a very twisted manner of implementing secularism,” she said at a press meet here.

Lekhi alleged that the Bengal government was not providing the land to the security forces, which was required to seal the border with Bangladesh at a certain place.

She said that while the Bengal government “sent back” four of the eight companies of central forces sent by the Union government, claiming that the situation was normal in Basirhat, it did not allow a BJP delegation, which included her, to visit the area.

To a question about Banerjee’s attack on the government over a documentary involving Amartya Sen being censored, Lekhi said he was not even an Indian resident.

When told by a reporter that Sen was an Indian citizen, she said she had no knowledge about it nor did she know about the documentary.

“And so far as voices of opposition are being muzzled, we can pick up newspapers and read. And fact is that when people like Sandip Dikshit and Rahul Gandhi are tweeting the kind of tweets, I don’t think it’s a question of opposition voices being muzzled, but it’s a question of opposition voices not talking sense,” she said.

—PTI