West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee today said that it would be a grave mistake for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to equate Bengal with Gujarat, or to try to turn the state into another Gujarat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe present home minister was in the rally when the bust of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar was broken\u2026 Bengal is not the same as Gujarat. It would be a mistake to think that way,\u201d Banerjee said, adding that the \u201cvandalism\u201d of that day had not gone well with the people of West Bengal. \u201cYou\u2019ve hurt our culture and sentiments,\u201d she said. Banerjee was speaking at the unveiling of a new bust at the Vidyasagar College in Kolkata\u2019s Bidhan Sarani today.<\/p>\n
Days before the final phase of the Lok Sabha polls in Kolkata, BJP president Amit Shah was holding a roadshow when some people vandalised the college premises and broke the bust of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar. Prior to the vandalism, some students were showing black flags at Shah.<\/p>\n
The Trinamool Congress has alleged that BJP goons had engineered the violence and the BJP too has claimed that the Trinamool Congress was behind the act.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, with the unveiling of a new bust, Banerjee added that there was no need for the Trinamool Congress to break statues of Marx or Lenin in order to remove the ruling CPIM from power in 2011.<\/p>\n
She said it was clearly seen (on videos) that some people in saffron clothes were behind the act, and that it had been done deliberately. The Bengal CM said that the BJP was deliberately causing post-poll violence in Bengal, and it was all part of their \u201cplan\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who love Bengal and value the state\u2019s culture should not accept this,\u201d she said. She appealed to the people to save the state from \u201criot-mongers\u201d who were trying to push the state into a situation like Gujarat.<\/p>\n
Later, speaking to journalists, Banerjee said that it was \u201cnot so easy to impose Section 356 in Bengal\u201d, and added that \u201cthere is no need to be so scared of the BJP.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is no need to be afraid of the BJP, Banerjee said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":5723,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-bengal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5722"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=5722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}