Two days after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was admitted to a hospital in Kolkata after suffering injuries while campaigning in Nandigram, a six-member Trinamool Congress delegation submitted a memorandum to the Election Commission on Friday and reiterated allegations that the party chief was targeted as part of a “deep-rooted conspiracy”.
The Trinamool Congress delegation met the full team of the poll body, including Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, for more than an hour in New Delhi. Party MPs Derek O’Brien, Saugata Roy, Satabdi Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Pratima Mondal and Santanu Sen were part of the meeting.
The memorandum cited social media posts and photos related to BJP leaders to suggest that the alleged attack on Banerjee was planned.
One of the posts shared in the memorandum showed a cartoon shared from BJP’s state unit President Dilip Ghosh’s Facebook profile. The cartoon suggested that Banerjee stumbled and fell while taking a leap from Bhowanipore, current Assembly constituency to Nandigram. The Trinamool Congress said that the caricature depicted that Banerjee would be “hit in Nandigram”.
The memorandum also cited the transfer of West Bengal Director General of Police Virendra, following complaints against him by the BJP. Trinamool Congress said that the decision was abrupt and taken without consultation with the state government.
The memorandum included photos of alleged witnesses of the incident who were interviewed by ANI and Times Now. The party claimed that they were “planted” as they could be seen with BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari in other photos. They also included photographs of Banerjee’s car, suggesting that it had no scratches. This, the memorandum said, proved that the witnesses’ accounts of the car brushing against a pole were false.
The memorandum cited another exchange between BJP MPs Babul Supriyo and Saumitra Khan on Twitter. In a thread of tweets, Supriyo criticised Banerjee for blaming the Railways alone for the recent fire incident at Strand Road in Kolkata. He also attacked West Bengal minister Bratya Basu for only crediting Banerjee for the relief work.
In a reply to this thread, Khan tagged Basu and said “Kal bujhte parbe. Bikel 5tar por” (Will come to know tomorrow. After 5 pm).
Based on these points, the Trinamool Congress claimed that the alleged attack was a “premeditated one”. The memorandum mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent speech in Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground too, where he had mocked Banerjee’s decision to contest elections from Nandigram, making a reference to a recent incident, where she almost fell while riding a two-wheeler. “All of us were praying that she [Banerjee] does not get hurt,” the prime minister had said. “Didi, I wish well for everyone. But what can I do when you have decided to divert your scooty to Nandigram and get hurt there.”
“Injuries to Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram were not a result of an unfortunate incident but that of a conspiracy,” Satabdi Roy told reporters after the meeting. “The events leading up to the attempt on her life leave no doubt that the attack was part of a deep-rooted conspiracy.”
He also said that Trinamool Congress leaders demanded a high-level investigation into the attack, according to ANI. “We left it to Election Commission to decide the source of investigation, we didn’t demand any specific investigation but we mentioned in our letter to ECI that there should be an unbiased investigation,” Roy added.
In the memorandum, the Trinamool Congress has also made allegations against Banerjee’s former aide and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Suvendu Adhikari. Both of them will contest against each other from Nandigram in the Assembly elections.
“When an attempt was made on the life of Banerjee, in which she was grievously hurt, to cover up the attack, eye-witnesses were planted, illustratively, eye-witnesses Chittaranjan Das and Debabrata Das, who testified that Banerjee’s car was hit against an iron pillar, are associates of Suvendu Adhikari,” the memorandum said.
Mamata Banerjee’s condition
Meanwhile, doctors at the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research in Kolkata on Friday said that the West Bengal chief minister is stable and her condition is satisfactory, PTI reported. The doctor added that the swelling on her left ankle has subsided and that she is feeling less pain due to wounds in her neck, shoulder and waist.
“We generally advise patients with similar injuries as that of Banerjee at least three to four weeks of rest,” he said.
The attack took place while Banerjee was coming from a temple in Reyapara on Wednesday. She had also alleged that the attack was a conspiracy against her. She said that she was intentionally shoved by four to five people who had entered the crowd, and that no police officer was present at the scene.
However, Opposition parties in West Bengal, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front and the Congress, have dismissed Trinamool Congress’s allegation as baseless and termed it as a political “drama” to gain sympathy votes.
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