With the nearing of Assembly elections, the bare-knuckle confrontation between the Trinamul Congress and the BJP seems to have taken an ugly turn with ‘Goli Maaro’ slogan, that was once uttered by a BJP leader in Shaheen Bagh during anti-CAA protests, once again resurfacing but from a TMC “peace rally” this time in Kolkata.

The battle to the Bengal throne having picked up momentum, the ruling Trinamul and the BJP are locking horns over a wide range of issues with the former calling the latter an “outsider” and “traitor”. The TMC turncoat and a heavyweight politician, Suvendu Adhikari, recently held a rally in the heart of Trinamul supremo Mamata Banerjee’s home-ground in South Kolkata while Miss Banerjee, on the same day, took the battle to Adhikari’s fort in Nandigram where she announced she will contest the elections from Nandigram which had catapulted her to the front stage of Bengal politics in 2011 when TMC formed a government in the state.

A day after Suvendu’s rally, which was met with fierce resistance, allegedly by Trinamul workers who pelted stones and wreaked havoc, the TMC took out a peace rally from Tollygunge to Hazra. However, it was from the Trinamul peace rally that the slogans of “Bengal ke gaddaro ko, goli maro saalon ko”(Shoot the traitors of Bengal) was raised. The slogan, that was originally “Desh ke gaddaro ko, goli maaro … ko”, was uttered by a BJP leader Anurag Thakur during the anti-CAA protests in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, last year, and was fiercely condemned by Trinamul Congress who compared the saffron brigade to a “group of thugs.”

Reacting to this development, Kunal Ghosh, TMC spokesperson condemned the act and said those who have uttered the slogans were wrong in doing so. However, Ghosh chose to ameliorate the controversy by justifying that these words “should never be taken literally”. He justified these statements which resemble the ones uttered by BJP Bengal president, Dilip Ghosh, who often allegedly threatens to assault TMC workers and send them to a crematorium.

However, the ‘Goli Maro’ slogan was met with scathing criticisms from the Left-Front where its leader Sujan Chakraborty condemned the slogan saying “The Trinamul Congress and the BJP share the same DNA. They share the same blood. I am shuddered to think of the depths to which the TMC has taken Bengal. What separates them from the saffron brigade?”.