New Delhi: Hitting out at the West Bengal government for the current state of affairs, the Centre on Tuesday said the situation there was akin to a “state of emergency.”
Speaking to the media outside the Rajya Sabha, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said, “The way West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has been conducting things in the state is no less than a state of emergency.”
Javadekar's comments come in the wake of acute political crisis in West Bengal where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Trinamool Congress have been sparring since the former stunned the TMC to win 18 seats in the state in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.
The Union home ministry has been seeking the state government's cooperation after four BJP workers were killed in post poll clashes over the last one month. The West Bengal government on Sunday assured the Centre that it would cooperate.
Marking 44 years of the Emergency imposed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi, Javadekar said, “On this day 44 years ago, Congress had imposed emergency. Press freedom and personal freedom was subverted and Lok Sabha elections were postponed. A lot of senior leaders fought against that.”
“In Bengal wherever we see that democracy is being thwarted, we will fight against it,” he added.
Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu adjourned the House on Tuesday morning as a mark of respect for sitting BJP MP Madan Lal Saini, who passed away on Monday night in New Delhi.
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