BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya raises President's rule demand

HEMTABAD: BJP national general secretary and Bengal minder Kailash Vijayvargiya wants the 2021 assembly elections in Bengal to be held under President’s Rule. He is the first among BJP leaders to openly voice such a demand.
“Holding of free and fair elections is not possible under Mamata Banerjee’s rule. The state administration is being run by a group of partisan and corrupt officials. We have already appealed to the President to seek reports from the West Bengal governor. Elections in this state should be conducted under President’s Rule,” Vijayvargiya said in Uttar Dinajpur on Saturday.
During the day, a BJP delegation led by the national general secretary reached out to the family of the party’s Hemtabad MLA Debendra Nath Roy, whose body was found hanging outside a closed shop more than a month ago on July 13, one-and-a-half kilometres from his residence.
BJP and the MLA’s widow have sought a CBI inquiry into what they called was a “premeditated murder” when the primary autopsy report stated that the injury was “ante-mortem”. The state police, however, held that it could be a “suicide”.
State BJP leaders rubbished the state police version and petitioned President Ram Nath Kovind the very next day, on July 14, showcasing the BJP MLA’s unnatural death as a continuation of the long series of “political killings” under Banerjee’s rule in Bengal.
“Democracy has been hanged in West Bengal. Political workers were being killed so far, and now elected leaders are being murdered and shown to have committed suicide. Anarchy prevails in the state, and its government has no right to be in power... We have demanded that the assembly be dissolved,” Vijayvargiya had said after meeting the President.
BJP leaders complained that as many as 105 BJP activists have been killed in the state in the last three years. Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar called on Union home minister Amit Shah in Delhi six days later on July 20 to brief him about the state’s law and order situation.
Vijayvargiya’s demand for President’s Rule comes a day after state BJP president Dilip Ghosh left it to the Election Commission to conduct free and fair polls in Bengal in the due course of time.