A year later, BJP back on violent track

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which till a few years back was a near unknown entity in West Bengal's political landscape, is slowly beginning to stand for an unenviable reputation of random violence, thereby breaking the stranglehold over aggression that the state's two largest parties — the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and CPI(M) — exercised thus far.

Exactly a year after BJP activists went on the rampage during a 12-hour shutdown against price rise, even setting alight a bus on Howrah bridge and damaging an IT park in the city's Sector V area, saffron party workers on Tuesday took the fight closer to the West Bengal government's headquarters at Writers' Buildings.

Hundreds of BJP activists today breached police barricades and tried to march into the heavily-guarded Writers’ Buildings, police sources said, adding that tear gas shells were used after a baton charge failed to disperse the protesters.

BJP’s state unit president Rahul Sinha was arrested along with several party workers, while Sinha alleged that nearly 50 activists were injured in police action.

Earlier in the day, the BJP had held a meeting at the intersection of BB Ganguly Street and Phears Lane, despite requests from the police to defer the event as it coincided with CPI(M)'s rally in nearby Esplanade.

Witnesses said that BJP workers attempted at walking down to Writers’ Building — through the Lalbazar area, which houses the headquarters of the Kolkata Police — but were accosted en route, subsequent to which the violence erupted.

“I had shut my shop in the morning, but came back to listen to Rahul Sinha's speech. After that everyone started marching towards Lalbazar, and the problem started. This happened around 1 pm,” said Ram Chandan, who owns a tobacco shop exactly opposite where the BJP meeting's dais stood.

Hours after the violence, atop the vacant stage — which incidentally shadowed a massive poster of TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, apart from facing another of Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi — lay a pair of cheap plastic slipper and a heap of bricks.

But by then, about two kilometers away, West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had already arrived at his own stage, in spite of the siege on his seat of power.