Kolkata: Bharatiya Janata Party’s Tathagata Roy, who is no stranger to hate comments, has now courted fresh controversy by using derogatory allusions while taking to Twitter over his party’s decision to field Bengali actresses.
Roy’s tweets were first reported by The Telegraph in Kolkata, which called the veteran “one of the many disheartened chief ministerial hopefuls in Bengal BJP.”
In a series of tweets, Roy blamed actresses and BJP candidates Parno Mitra, Srabanti Chatterjee and Payel Sarkar for going on a trip in a steamer with TMC’s Kamarhati MLA Madan Mitra. Such a trip did, in fact, take place according to the newspaper.
“These women were so politically stupid that they had gone on a steamer trip with TMC’s playboy-politician Madan Mitra less than a month before elections and shot selfies with him,” he wrote.
He also named BJP’s Bengal minder Kailash Vijayvargiya and state president Dilip Ghosh, asking them, “What great qualities were these women possessed of?”
“It must not be forgotten that a BJP electoral ticket carries with it substantial money for running the election. Or for other purposes!” he also wrote.
In a subsequent tweet on the same thread, Roy corrected himself to note that it was actor Tanusree Chakraborty, also a BJP candidate, was the one who clicked selfies, not Parno Mitra.
However, in an earlier tweet in Bengali, Roy used a term to refer to the women “nogoreer notira” which refers literally to “actresses of the city” and carries misogynistic connotations.
Both TMC and BJP had fielded several candidates, men and women, from among Bengal’s actors and performance artistes.
Actor Srabanti, along with unnamed women leaders of BJP, reportedly spoke to Telegraph against Roy’s comments. The former asked for proof of the steamer trip.
TMC’s Madan Mitra, too, reportedly criticised the comments, as did BJP state chief Dilip Ghosh, who said, ” Someone can live in a world of his own imagination, but we are fighting in reality.”
Roy is no stranger to making controversial comments.
Recently, he filed a police complaint against actor-turned-Trinamool Congress leader Saayoni Ghosh over a tweet posted years ago on the ground that it hurt religious sentiments of Hindus. This took place after he had sparred with her on Twitter.
Ghosh was fielded by Trinamool Congress from Asansol South and lost to BJP’s Agnimitra Paul.
The BJP’s campaign in West Bengal has been accused of being a particularly misogynistic one. Dilip Ghosh had said that TMC chief Mamata Banerjee should wear bermudas to show off her injured leg, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s often repeated slow, crawling “Didi oh Didi” chant acquired cult status among BJP’s workers.