Mamata Banerjee calls Bengal violence claims ‘BJP’s gimmick’, condemns Centre’s efforts to ‘control’ Twitter

Days after West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar wrote to Mamata Banerjee complaining about her “studied silence” on cases of post-election violence in the state, the chief minister Thursday targeted the Central government saying there is “no political violence” anywhere in Bengal and that it is all “BJP’s gimmick.”

She asserted that the claims made were completely “baseless”.

“There is no political violence going on in the state right now. There may have been one or two sporadic incidents, but those can’t be labelled as incidents of political violence,” she added.

The governor’s remarks came a day after a delegation of BJP MLAs led by Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari met him to discuss the alleged deterioration of law and order in the state. Meanwhile, Dhakar is presently in Delhi and will return on June 18.

In the letter, the governor wrote, “Such ‘punitive’ decimation of human rights and dignity shames democracy. In spite of your attention having been drawn to the enormity of situation, huge exodus of people in search of cover for life and destruction of property worth crores, there has only been stunning silence at your end and you did not deem it necessary to even deliberate this grave human tragedy in any of the cabinet meetings so far.”

The ruling Trinamool Congress hit back at Dhankhar for making “venomous and baseless comments”.

Banerjee further slammed the BJP-led union government over its “efforts to control” Twitter and claimed that the Centre, having failed to influence the microblogging platform, is now trying to bulldoze it.

The remark comes in the wake of an intensified public spat between Twitter India and the government after Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad Wednesday said the microblogging platform had “deliberately chosen” not to comply with new intermediary guidelines despite being given “multiple opportunities”.

Drawing a parallel, Banerjee said her government, too, was being meted out the same treatment by the Centre.

“I condemn it; they can’t control Twitter, so they are trying to bulldoze it. They (Centre) are trying to do so with everyone they are unable to manage. They can’t control me, and that is why they are trying to bulldoze my government, too,” Banerjee said while talking to reporters in Kolkata.

Earlier this week, the TMC government, while acknowledging reports about people being displaced from their homes in the wake of violence that followed the declaration of Assembly election results in West Bengal, had, however told the Supreme Court that allegations that the state machinery was complicit in the violence are “false” and “misleading”.

This was in response to a notice issued by the top court on a PIL seeking its intervention “to stop” the “post-poll violence”, an SIT probe into the alleged crimes and for compensating and rehabilitating those “internally displaced” due to the violence.

Such allegations, the state said, “are frivolous and politically motivated”.

The state government has also claimed that there was a stream of fake news and morphed videos concerning the scenario of post-poll violence in West Bengal on social media platforms.

With PTI inputs