Kolkata, Apr 15 (PTI) In a sharp attack on the BJP, senior TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee on Wednesday said the party responsible for breaking the bust of polymath Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar at a city college in 2019 and vandalisation, is now moving around with fish to profess their love for Bengal, its customs and culinary habits.
Addressing an election rally at Bishnupur assembly segment in South 24 Parganas district, the TMC national general secretary said those who have suddenly woken up to the Bengali ‘asmita’ before the elections, visit the state in droves during elections and then forget its people for four-five years.
“It is shocking that leaders of the same party which was behind the breaking of bust of Pandit Iswarchandra Vidyasagar are now going around localities flaunting fish in their hands and seeking votes.
“They are representing the same party of anti-Bengal, outsider vandals, however hard they may hide their stripes,” Banerjee said at the rally in Bishnupur under his Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency.
“They are now displaying false love and proximity to Bengali culture, our heritage. Our culinary habits. But how much anti-Bengal they are can be gauged from the act of vandalism at citadels of education and culture like Vidyasagar College,” Banerjee said.
Banerjee was alluding to the breaking of Vidyasagar’s bust during a road show by Shah in north Kolkata before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, which the TMC had alleged was perpetrated by the BJP workers attending Shah’s road show in north Kolkata.
Castigating Union Home Minister Amit Shah for threatening TMC activists not to “commit any mischief and stay put in their homes on the day of voting”, Banerjee said, “a strongman from Gujarat has surfaced here. He is asking TMC activists to stay indoors at their homes on the poll day and counting day on May 4, threatening to settle scores.
“I urge him not to try to intimidate TMC. I urge him to visit Bengal on May 4 afternoon and see by himself how the electorate has rejected his party – a bunch of outsiders,” Banerjee added.
Alleging the BJP has put curbs on consumption of fish and meat in several NDA-ruled states, Banerjee said, “If they (BJP) come to power, the first thing they will do is to ban eating and sale of fish and meat”.
“Those BJP leaders who had advocated the public sale and eating of meat and fish in certain places and on certain days, will have to sell fish and meat after May 4,” he said.
“We don’t do religion-based politics like BJP, we don’t believe in imposing culinary diktat on anyone. That is not Bengal’s culture. Our pluralism teaches us to profess my religion at home, in privacy,” he sai.
Describing BJP leaders as “migratory birds” he said they turn out in large numbers only during polls in Bengal.
“BJP was missing during the Covid 19 pandemic when it was the TMC which stood by people at hours of distress and opened community kitchens and arranged medical help,” he claimed. PTI SUS RG
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