Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee on Saturday lambasted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after eggs and stones were hurled at party MP Abhishek Banerjee during his visit to Sonarpur in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district.
Reposting a video on assault on Abhishek shared by TMC on micro-blogging site X (formerly Twitter), the former chief minister said the rulers, referring to the BJP, has become killers and the saffron party should be ashamed of it.
"RULERS BECAME KILLERS- shame on you BJP," Mamata said.
Several other TMC leaders also hit out at BJP for the assault, with Sushmita Dev calling it a "pre-mediated and planned" attack. In a post in X, she said this was not a "people’s outrage" but BJP's attempt to silence the TMC.
TMC leader Sagarika Ghose called attack shocking and blamed the police. She said the police was nowhere to be seen when Abhishek was assaulted.
Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge also condemned the assault and said the central and West Bengal governments should ensure security for all opposition leaders, saying political differences can never justify any kind of violence.
"The deliberate lack of adequate police protection for a prominent Opposition leader speaks volumes about the BJP’s politics of vendetta and persecution," he said on X.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi said the attack on Abhishek was an assault on the people who elected him and on the democracy. He said it has only shown the "ugly face of the BJP's politics of revenge", while adding that political differences can never justify violence.
"The central government and the West Bengal government—both must take immediate action against the perpetrators, and ensure that no public representative, regardless of their party, ever has to worry about their safety," he said on X.
Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav also criticised the police and called the assault on Abhishek a "murderous attack". "The anarchic government in Bengal has proven that the BJP is capable of nothing but hate-filled, negative, violent politics," the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said in Hindi on X.
Meanwhile, BJP leader Samik Bhattacharya has distanced the party from the assault on Abhishek and said such incidents are not acceptable in a democratic system. Bhattacharya, who is also BJP's West Bengal unit chief, recounted that Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, when he was the Leader of Opposition in the state, was also assaulted in such a way, though.
"We can never forget about the atrocities the TMC did on us. Women were assaulted and men were manhandled for supporting the BJP. We all know about what the TMC did. Despite this, TMC leaders and MPs are safe, thanks to the BJP government," he told reporters.
Coming to Abhishek, the TMC national general secretary was assaulted when he visited Sonarpur to meet families of post-poll violence victims. Stones, shoes and eggs were hurled at him by unidentified people. Abhishek called the assault an attempt to kill him, adding that he will move to the court.
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