The BJP-nominated fact-finding committee probing violence in Bengal’s rural polls has alleged that neither police nor the administration listens to people’s grievances under the rule of Mamata Banerjee.
BJP MP and committee’s convenor Ravi Shankar Prasad, on Thursday, said that under the Banerjee-steered government, the “listening” (of grievances) has stopped. “Neither police, nor administration listens,” he said.
Referring to Wednesday’s press conference he had addressed, Prasad said that he had raised several questions, and Banerjee, as it appeared in newspapers, said that she regrets the violence. “For the first time, Mamataj has said that ‘I regret the violence’. Mamataji to merely regret is not sufficient, action is needed,” he said.
Prasad and other members of the committee visited Raj Bhavan, Kolkata, to meet Governor C V Ananda Bose. Talking to reporters outside Raj Bhavan, Prasad said that the purpose of the meeting was to convey that as a constitutional head, the governor sees that lives and property are protected, and police take action for those who have been attacked. “This is what we prayed for, before him,” Prasad said, adding that there should be some avenue where grievances should be listened to.
Prasad spoke about the condition of victims of violence, he came across during the committee’s field visit on Wednesday. He stated that houses were ransacked, a minor boy got a serious “cut”, the women were in a state of fright, a “Durga-sthan” was attacked, and CCTV was broken, he said.
Talking of one Shantanu Patra, a poor mason of Minakhan assembly constituency in North 24 Parganas district, who works in Tamil Nadu, Prasad said that his house was attacked. Patra had built his house with his earnings. His mistake is that he has hung Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s photograph in his house. His house was attacked and ransacked, TV and furniture, too, were damaged, he added.
“We asked all the victims, ‘have you complained?’ They said yes, ‘Has any police action been taken?’ They said no. Now, this is a sensitive district. Basirhat (city) is close to the Bangladesh border… What type of police (force) of Mamataji, is this? Where poor people are being killed, attacks are being made, the houses are being ransacked… and you are not taking action?” he questioned.