The BJP candidate of the Bardhaman-Durgapur Lok Sabha constituency, Dilip Ghosh garlanded the wrong statue on Sunday, sparking a fresh controversy. Instead garlanding the statue of Maharaja Uday Chand Mahatab, the erstwhile maharaja of Burdwan, Mr Ghosh garlanded the statue of the official astrologer of the maharaja’s, Banbehari Kapoor during his walk in Burdwan town today. He and his associates also chanted Maharaja Udaychand Amar Rahe slogans. When the locals pointed out his mistake he asked them casually, then how the statue of Kapoor came there. The issue has created a stir in Burdwan town.

This is not the first time BJP stalwarts have honoured the wrong statues in the state; earlier, Union home minister Amit Shah, thinking he was honouring Birsa Munda, garlanded the bust of someone else. The Maharaja of Burdwan had played a key role in the socio economic upliftment of the region, including setting up the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), the first multipurpose river valley project in independent India on the model of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) of USA.

The DVC projects (dams and barrages) saved the lives of millions of people from floods. The Damodar was once called the sorrow of Bengal. The greatest recorded flood was to the order of 6,50,000 cusec and were experienced in 1913 and 1935. A flood 1943 was of much lower intensity and carried 3,50,000 cusec of water. But even with this lower intensity, the river breached its left embankment near Amirpur downstream of Bardhaman. The countryside was marooned under two-metre depth of water, and the railway roads and telecommunication system were disrupted This deepened the anxiety of the British Government as the logistic support to their army involved in the Second World War was interrupted. The Flood Enquiry Committee was constituted in 1944 under the chairmanship of Uday Chand Mahatab, the Maharaja of Bardhaman.

This paved the way for the creation of the Damodar Valley Corporation. Professor Meghnad Saha and Maharaja Uday Chand Mahatab had jointly convinced the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to set up the dams and barrages on the Damodar. The palace of the Burdwan Maharajas was also donated to set up the Burdwan University’s administrative building. The campus of Burdwan University is popularly known as Rajbati Campus. “This party doesn’t understand the history, heritage and culture of this great state and that’s why their leaders have been constantly making the same mistakes. Even during the 2021 Lok Sabha polls the PM Narendra Modi has named so many luminaries in his speech while campaigning in Ningha, but failed to take the name of Kazi Nazrul Islam, the greatest son of the soil in nearby Churulia, whom Partition also failed to divide,” says TMC candidate Kirti Azad, whose father Bhagawat Jha Azad, was also a freedom fighter