A viral video of three women prostrating themselves and crawling on a nondescript road has emerged as the latest flashpoint between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Opposition BJP in West Bengal.
BJP’s West Bengal unit president, Sukanta Majumdar, tweeted a 27-second video and alleged that some tribal women, who had joined his party, were forced by the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) to perform a “dandavat parikrama” as punishment and were forced to rejoin the State’s ruling party.
“TMC did everything to insult them (Tribal community). I appeal to all people of the tribal community across the nation to protest against the party as they are anti-tribal,” Majumdar said.
The BJP State president shared a video on Twitter that instantly went viral in which three women can be seen performing ‘dandavat parikrama’ in a small town in North Dinajpur district.
“Martina Kisku, Shiuli Mardi, Thakran Soren and Malati Murmu, residents of Tapan Gofanagar, Tapan, joined the BJP yesterday. They belong to the ST community. Today, TMC goons forced them to return to the ruling party and punished them by asking them to do a Dandavat Parikrama,” tweeted Majumdar.
“TMC has time and again insulted tribal people. This takes it even higher. This is highly condemnable. We firmly stand with our karyakartas and will do everything to protect them,” he added.
He alleged that the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) is doing everything to “insult” the Tribal community. BJP’s IT head and West Bengal co-incharge Amit Malviya also took to Twitter to claim that Bengal was in “ruins” under Mamata Banerjee.
“These Tribal women (Martina Kisku, Shiuli Mardi, Thakran Soren and Malati Murmu) doing Dandavat Parikrama are residents of Balurghat. This is not a religious ritual but punishment meted out by local TMC leaders because they joined the BJP. WB is in ruins under Mamata Banerjee,” said Malviya.
About 200 people had defected to the BJP from the Trinamool Congress in the Balurghat region.
District BJP leader Swarup Chowdhury accused the TMC leadership of successfully coercing 3-4 of the 200 party workers into joining the TMC again. “The way TMC leaders forced the women to rub their noses on the road for them to be accepted back into the party is highly shameful and insulting,” he said. Chowdhury also vowed to approach the State Women’s Commission about the incident.
This has led to a war of words between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress. TMC leader Pradipta Chakraborty claimed that the women realised their mistake within 24 hours of joining the BJP, and therefore they returned to TMC the next day and performed the atonement by crawling on the ground and rubbing their noses on the ground. She said that the party will meet the others who joined BJP to convince them to rejoin TMC.
Pradipta Chakraborty also said that the people who joined the BJP on April 6 were not members of any political party but they were supporters of TMC, and BJP misled them into joining the party. “Some women, who were not affiliated with any political party but supported the Trinamool Congress, were misled into joining the BJP,. They later realised their mistake and performed ‘Dandavat Parikrama’ to repent for it,” she claimed.
Meanwhile, one of the women, who was seen rubbing her nose and prostrating herself on the road in the viral video, claimed that she acted out of her own accord. Martina Kisku told a local TV channel that she could not sleep all night after deserting the Trinamool Congress.
