Kalyan Banerjee said former BJP chief Amit Shah (in photo) of political vendetta. (File)
Kolkata:
Mamata Banerjee’s party’s tussle with the BJP over the attack on its chief JP Nadda rolled on to Saturday, with the centre’s summons to West Bengal’s top bureaucrat and police chief supplying the munitions for the latest offensive.
Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee, who helmed the party’s bid on Friday to offset the BJP’s bombardment over the incident, wrote a letter the Union Home Secretary, who reports to Home Minister Amit Shah, alleging that the summons smacked of a “political motive”.
“It appears that with a political motive and at the instance of your minister, who is a political person belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), you have issued the said letter,” Mr Banerjee said. referring to the summons for Monday that have already been rebuffed.
“You are trying to coerce the officers of the State of West Bengal with political vindictiveness. It appears also you are interfering with the federal structure embodied under the scheme of the constitution of India,” he added.
The top two bureaucrats of West Bengal on Friday had asked to be excused from meeting in Delhi over the law and order situation in the state with special reference to the attack on BJP president JP Nadda’s convoy.
The Chief Secretary and Director General of Police sought to be “dispensed” because the convoy attack was “already being examined”, the state government said in a letter to Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla.
The escalating row over the attack on Mr Nadda’s convoy on Thursday has opened a new front in the bitter feud between West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP ahead of state elections due next year.
The BJP chief’s convoy was attacked with bricks, stones and sticks near Kolkata. Some leaders were injured and cars were damaged in the incident, which the BJP has blamed on supporters of the Trinamool Congress.
The incident took place at Diamond Harbour, the parliamentary constituency of the Chief Minister’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee.
Video clips showed rocks smashing through windscreens and windows as the cars moved on a crowded road in Diamond Harbour, around 60 km from Kolkata. The BJP said its leaders Kailash Vijayvargiya and Mukul Roy were injured.
West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, representative of the BJP-led government at the centre, has also amped up his permanent war with the Trinamool government after the incident, chastising the party in media briefings and public missives to the centre.
