india

Updated: Jan 03, 2019 16:21 IST

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his “lack of democracy in Bengal” comment in an interview aired on various TV channels on January 1. Banerjee said none needs to lecture Bengal on democracy.

“Some people are shouting untruths. Are you trying to impart lessons in democracy to us? Bengal practices a democracy that is not followed anywhere else,” Banerjee said without taking the Prime Minister’s name in a speech at Ilambazar in Birbhum district.

She alleged that the Centre is trying to gag people by snooping on their conversation over phones and computers. “You may tell your husband to buy fish from the market and even that conversation is not out of their scanner,” she said.

This is the first time she responded to the Prime Minister’s remark that the BJP workers are being denied democratic rights in West Bengal.

“What has happened in West Bengal. A political party (the BJP) is being denied a basic democratic right. Our workers are brutally killed in West Bengal, Kerala (and) Karnataka. Politics of violence has to end. All parties have to reaffirm their commitment to peaceful politics,” the Prime Minister’s Office had tweeted quoting Modi.

On the evening of January 1, Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee had retorted, “The BJP should not lecture on democracy and democratic rights. They destroyed democracy and different institutions in the country. The BJP do not have any respect for democracy and the Constitution.”

In her address on Thursday, Mamata Banerjee said, “People live in peace here, but some are trying to malign us. How can they indulge in politicking if people live in peace?” West Bengal is the most peaceful place on the earth, she said.

Incidentally, on December 7 in a press conference in Delhi, the BJP president Amit Shah alleged that as many as 26 per cent of political murders that take place in the country in a year happens in West Bengal (the state that happens to accommodate about 7.5 per cent of the country population according to the 2011 census).

BJP Bengal unit president Dilip Ghosh said that 38 workers of the party have been killed in West Bengal in 2018, alleging a role of the ruling party supporters in these incidents.

Partha Chatterjee had brushed aside Shah’s allegation as baseless.

The BJP and Trinamool Congress are locked in a high-stake battle in West Bengal in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election. Amit Shah has identified West Bengal as a focus state for the Lok Sabha polls.

While BJP boss Amit Shah has set his sight on at least 22 of the 42 seats in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who is trying to catalyse an anti-BJP front of regional parties, has vowed to make a clean sweep of the constituencies in the parliamentary polls later this year.