BJP will do nothing for the Gorkhas

At the Trinamul Bhavan, state minister Bratya Basu said that Hills leader Bishnu Prasad Sharma responding to the call of Trinamul national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee and inspired by CM Mamata Banerjee joined the party today.

Bishnu Prasad Sharma, after his joining, said: “The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will do nothing for the Gorkhas. They have sent an interlocutor, an IPS officer, Pankaj Kumar, but he does not have an appointment letter from the home ministry. He comes and stays in a private hotel. His bills are being paid by Darjeeling MP Raju Bista. The interlocutor does not have an official phone number. He does not have a personal secretary. He does not have a contact address. No public hearing has taken place. The interlocutor has been sent only before elections to mislead the Gorkhas once again. Darjeeling cannot be developed by placing faith in the BJP.”

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Another senior leader of the party and minister Dr Shashi Panja on the new joining said: “He is an important Gorkha leader, a farmer, and someone deeply connected to the grassroots of North Bengal. Many of his long-pending projects are now going to be materialised. There is a wide gap between what the BJP says and what it does, and he has clearly understood this reality.”

Talking about the faux pas made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about Thakur Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Basu said, “Today, you have again seen that PM Narendra Modi has displayed another example of his lack of knowledge about Bengal and Bengali culture. He has prefixed ‘Swami’ to Ramakrishna Paramhansa. CM Mamata Banerjee has already tweeted about this. It is difficult to understand why PM Modi deliberately and unprovokedly maligns Bengali culture. He could have referred to him as Sri Ramakrishna Dev, Thakur Ramakrishna Dev, or Ramakrishna Paramhansa. The prefix ‘Swami’ is generally used for Swami Vivekananda.