Serampore BJP, TMC candidates react to audio-visual clip
An audio-visual clip has gone viral exposing a conversation between the Serampore sitting MP Kalyan Banerjee and BJP Serampore LS candidate Mr Kabir Shankar Bose.
Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee, who has been caught in a massive political storm over his mimicking of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, has defended the act, saying mimicry is an art and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had done it in the Lok Sabha.
“I have great respect for Dhankhar ji. But, I did not want to hurt anyone…and it’s one type of art. Mimicry was done also by the Prime Minister in Lok Sabha during the last term. I can show you the video. But no one took it seriously,” he said.
Further, explaining the incident, Banerjee said a ‘mock parliament’ was going on and sought to know if the Rajya Sabha chairman actually behaves in the way he had acted.
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“I have not said it was Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha…a mock parliament was going on. If he has taken this to his shoulder, I am really helpless. Does he really behave like this in the Rajya Sabha?” he asked.
Dhankhar has taken strong exceptions of the act and termed it an “insult to the his office” and his “Jat farmer” background.
“Office of Chairman, Rajya Sabha and Office of Speaker are very different. Political parties will have their cross currents, they will have exchanges, but imagine a senior leader of your party, video graphing another member of another party. Mimicry of the chairman, mimicry of Speaker. How ridiculous, how shameful, how unacceptable,” he said.
The BJP and Prime Minister Modi has also expressed solidarity to Dhankhar and slammed the Opposition MP for “abject theatrics”.
Modi dialled Dhankhar and said that he was pained to see the Opposition MP mimicking him in the Parliament complex.
In a social media post on ‘X’, Dhankhar wrote, “Received a telephone call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He expressed great pain over the abject theatrics of some MPs and that too in the Parliament complex yesterday. He told me that he has been at the receiving end of such insults for twenty years and counting but the fact that it could happen to a Constitutional office like the Vice President of India and that too in the Parliament was unfortunate.”
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