BJP pulls up Mamata Govt. over Malda violence

Justifying the move to send a three-member party committee to Malda to take stock of the ground situation, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday launched a blistering attack on the Mamata Banerjee government and alleged that her administration is sleeping and keeping a blind eye to the untoward incidents taking place in the state.

Posing five questions to the TMC regime in West Bengal, BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh said that the Kalechak incident was an issue of national security as per his party.

"This incident happened on January 3 and there were leaflets and publicity materials that were being distributed, they were stroking communal passions and such kind of communal issues were being raised in the publicity materials that were distributed in Malda, Kalechak. As a government in a secular country, isn't it a responsibility of the state government to stop this kind of circulation which strokes communal passions?" he asked.

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He alleged that according to Banerjee, the incident was a reaction to an incident which happened on December 1, 2015.

"An unfortunate, condemnable statement coming out from an individual on Mohammed Prophet. But then the question is it happened on December 1, 2015, the reaction happens on January 3. It takes more than 30 days. If there is a communal reaction, it has to be spontaneous. Therefore, it was not a communal reaction, it was a planned action," he said.

Singh further accused Banerjee of making a U-turn on the issue of Malda within 24 hours.

"Mamata ji says it is not a big issue and it was between local people of Malda, Kalechak, versus the BSF. The question is that the mob which was of over one lakh people, why didn't they go to the BSF barrack and burn it if it was between the local people? How come the people who collected were more than one lakh? And why then did they go to the police station?" he asked.

Highlighting a possible fake currency racket emerging from Malda, Singh said it has been widely reported that the NIA had been working to burst a Malda fake currency racket and more than 15 people all over India had been arrested in the recent past and mostly they all are connected to Malda.

"NIA in consultation with the Home Secretary of Bengal, in end 2015 prepared a module to burst this fake currency racket in Malda. And based on this, information was there was there that records were there in the police station of Kalechak which came under attack on January 3," he said.

He also pointed out that Malda had become a hub for drug trade because of the ignored opium cultivation.

"In large number, acres after acres, there is farming of opium that is happening in Malda. Isn't your administration, your police aware of it? Because it is not on a small piece of plot, so why is your administration sleeping and keeping a blind eye? Therefore, this opium farming which leads to drug smuggling across the border, which leads to the fake currency racket which was going to be busted raises enough suspicion that why the police station where all these records were kept was attacked," he added.

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Expressing concern over national security, Singh added that the BJP has decided that once the three-member delegation returned, a delegation would meet the Home Minister of India with the request to an appropriate agency to look into it.

A 'fact-finding' team of BJP MPs was on Monday stopped by district authorities from visiting Kaliachak which was hit by violence on December 3, as the political battle between the TMC and BJP over the incident heated up.