JP Nadda peddling lies about Bengal govt, BJP hungry for votes amid pandemic, says TMC

KOLKATA: The TMC on Thursday charged BJP national president J P Nadda with "peddling lies", and said those who have excluded Bengali from the list of classical languages in the new education policy should not lecture others on the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore.
Earlier in the day, Nadda launched a scathing attack on the TMC government, accusing it of having an "anti-Hindu" mindset and pursuing "minority appeasement" policies.
He alleged that Tagore's legacy was "sullied by TMC- backed land mafia" at Visva-Bharati, where violence had broken out recently over construction of a fence at Pous Mela ground.
TMC secretary-general Partha Chatterjee said the people of Bengal need no lessons from those "who had vandalised the statue of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar".
"The BJP leaders both in Delhi and in Kolkata should stop peddling lies and misinformation against the state government. They are lecturing us on how to tackle the Covid situation. I would like to know what their record is ... The saffron party is just hungry for votes, even as the state is battling a pandemic," Chatterjee said.
A bust of the 19th-century social reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was ransacked during a clash between TMC and BJP workers on May 14 last year, when Amit Shah was holding a roadshow in Kolkata ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Both the parties had accused each other of desecrating the polymath's bust.
"What have they done to preserve Rabindranath Tagore's legacy? If they are so worried about it, they should not have excluded Bengali from the list of classical languages in the National Education Policy. This only reflects their mindset towards Bengalis and our language. Those who have vandalised the statue of Vidyasagar should not lecture us on preserving the heritage of Visva-Bharati," he told reporters.
Claiming that the saffron party had no regard for constitutional provisions, he said the BJP's diatribe over political violence in the state was "completely baseless".
Nadda, during his virtual address in the morning, had also said that the Bengal government imposes lockdown in a manner which benefits only one section of people.
Chatterjee, in response, said, "They have a problem with everything that the state does. If the lockdown is not imposed, they make an issue out of it. If it is imposed, they have something else to say. They are basically confused."
Echoing him, TMC's Rajya Sabha MP Derek O' Brien issued a point-by-point rebuttal to Nadda's allegations.
In a statement, he said that the state government strives hard to ensure the welfare of people, but the BJP-led government at the Centre tries to steal the credit.
"The Centre behaves like it was some kind of a benevolent leader distributing goodies, such as the AIIMS hospital in Kalyani, to the state. The fact is that the state has provided land and all sort of infrastructure for the hospital," O'Brien said.
He iterated that the central government was yet to clear the dues it owed to the state.
"The BJP is over-eager to steal credit for any good work done by the state governments. It is equally over-eager to blame the states for any lapse on the part of the Centre. Let states do their job... the Centre can do its own job.
"A good start would be transferring money directly to bank accounts of those in need. And the Centre can also clear dues of over Rs 1.5 lakh crore it owes to Bengal," he added.