Union Minister Babul Supriyo.

The BJP on Wednesday hit back at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for blaming the “Centre’s vendetta politics” behind actor Tapas Paul’s death, saying her party’s “neglect and mistreatment” caused the former TMC MP’s demise.

BJP MP and Union minister Babul Supriyo said, “She (Mamata Banerjee) has little or no respect for Tapas Paul. He never got due respect in Trinamool Congress. She did not even visit Paul for once. Since Paul got involved in a scam, Mamata Banerjee and her party maintained a distance from him.”

State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said slammed the CM for “playing politics over Paul’s death”. “Mamata Banerjee has started doing politics over Paul’s death to take mileage out of it. During his troubled times, no one and especially Banerjee did not stand by his family. Now, when he is dead they are talking about him,” Ghosh said.

Lauding Paul as one of the finest actors of Bengali cinema, BJP state vice-president Jaiprakash Majumdar said, “We have seen how Mamata Banerjee sat on a dharna to stop CBI interrogation of Rajeev Kumar (an ex-Kolkata police chief in a chit fund case). But the same Banerjee didn’t keep in touch with Paul after his arrest. It was due to the TMC and Banerjee’s neglect and mistreatment that Paul became depressed and his health deteriorated,” he alleged.

Congress MP Pradip Bhattacharya described Banerjee’s comments as a “perverted way” of using the occasion of a dead person’s last journey “to score political brownie points”.

CPI(M) legislative party leader Sujan Chakraborty, too, wondered what made Banerjee so sympathetic towards Paul whom the party “neglected” after his arrest.

—With PTI Inputs