Bengal on the boil, Mamata should resign as state Home Minister: BJP leader

Senior BJP leader Mukul Roy on Monday claimed that seven of his party workers have been killed in West Bengal since the Lok Sabha poll results were announced and demanded Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's "immediate resignation" from the post of the state's Home Minister.

"Seven BJP activists have been killed so far after the poll results were announced on May 23. Two of them have been killed in the Sandeshkhali clash while three more from the area are still missing. We suspect they have also been killed," Roy said here.

"If the MPs allege that the state police is inactive, it is a failure of Mamata Banerjee as she is also the state home minister. So she should take responsibility of the lapses and resign from the post immediately," he said.

Accusing Banerjee of fuelling communal unrest in the state by providing special treatment to the minority community, Roy urged her to refrain from such practices.

"Mamata is treating a specific community in Bengal differently and making communal statements to inflict unrest. Such comments are not worthy of her post. We expect her to refrain from making such provocative statements in future," Roy said, adding that the BJP will try its best to counter the Trinamool's "communalism".

Referring to the Trinamool's response to the MHA's advisory to the West Bengal government, Roy said it was "most unfortunate" that the letter by Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee to Union Home Minister Amit Shah has gone public and said he will send a letter to Chatterjee with an appropriate response.

"Partha Chatterjee may write a letter to the home minister as a representative of a specific political party but that letter should not be exposed at a public domain. It is most unfortunate," said the BJP leader who was earlier with the Trinamool Congress.

"As the letter is in public domain, I will myself write a letter to Chatterjee giving him a complete reply to all his allegations," he said.

The BJP leader, once considered as the right hand man of Banerjee, said a majority of people in Bengal have voted against Banerjee and her party in the 2019 polls and urged the Trinamool supremo to accept the "people's mandate".

"The BJP has no intention to destabilise the Bengal government. But the people's mandate in Bengal has gone against the Trinamool Congress and its supremo Mamata," Roy claimed.

"Trinamool has got 2.47 crore votes in the 2019 polls while the opposition parties together have got more than three crore votes. Remember all opposition parties in Bengal including Congress, CPI-M and BJP sought votes in this election to defeat Banerjee. So the people's mandate is clearly against her," he said.

--IANS

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