Bengal BJP presents its ‘Charge-sheet’ against the Mamata government on its 2nd anniversary

By: Krishanu Mitra

The West Bengal BJP presented its ‘Chargesheet’ against the state government on its 2nd anniversary. Briefing the members of the print & electronic media over it at the party’s State Headquarters on 22/5/13 State President Sri Rahul Sinha accused the state government of failing the people’s mandate on several fronts. Sri Sinha charged the ruling TMC government of gross corruption, failing to maintain law & order, mis-governance, failing to utilize central funds on development schemes and being vindictive against opposition parties & its carders very much in line with the style of the erstwhile CPM government.

On corruption the BJP highlighted the ‘Trident’ & the ‘Chitfund’ scams. Rahul Sinha claimed that barring the BJP all other political parties of all colours and shades are privy to the loot of the Chit-fund companies and their corrupt practices. He expressed surprise at the reluctance of the state to hand over the investigations to the CBI. He also reminded all that it was the BJP and the BJP alone that has been warning the government of this impending loot being orchestrated in Bengal in the name of these chitfunds. Even last year while presenting the chargesheet on the 1st anniversary of the TMC government the BJP drew the attention of all concerned towards these Chitfund loot and even mentioning the ‘Saradha Group’ in particular.

Earlier a committee was appointed under the chairmanship of ex-State President and National Executive member Prof. Tathagata Roy to prepare this ‘Chargesheet’.

The nine point question that the BJP posed to Mamata are:

1. Using the police and the administration in a partisan manner to help the ruling party and victimize the opposition activists very much in line with the erstwhile left government.
2. In-spite of declaring its intent to announce a ‘Industrial policy’ nothing has come so far.
3. ‘Bengal Leads’ investors’ meet has been a huge failure and only ended up draining the constrained state coffers further.
4. No concrete step has been initiated for fighting unemployment.
5. Nakedly perusing minority appeasement.
6. The state government being hand-in-gloves with the ‘Chit-fund’ companies.
7. Attempting to shield the culprits of the ‘Chit-fund’ scam.
8. The fact that scamster Sudipta Sen purchased the CM’s painting (CM being a amateur painter) for 1.86 crore, proves that its an attempt to buy over the CM.
9. The CM’s claim that she knew nothing of the ‘Chit-fund’ mess before April 15 is a fallacy.

Though like a responsible opposition and in truly statesman like Sri Rahul Sinha complimented the state government for restoring peace to the maoist affected ‘Jangalmahal’ and partially solving the ‘Darjeeling’ embargo.

WHY DID BJP WITHDRAW FROM THE HOWRAH BYPOLL?

By Shri Tathagata Roy
A lot of BJP's well-wishers, both in West Bengal and elsewhere, have wondered on this and regretted this decision of our central leadership. I myself sat in the West Bengal State Election Committee meeting, agreed on Ashim Ghosh's name and thereafter left for the North-east on some professional assignments. On my way back, somewhere near Guwahati airport, I received this bombshell, which left me depressed right through till Wednesday afternoon. On Wednesday afternoon I met our President Rahul Sinha and our co-Central Observer Siddharth Nath Singh and had long interactions with them.
Siddharth made it clear that there was no question of holding out an olive branch to Trinamool. In fact (though Siddharth himself didn't say it) Mamata has her tongue hanging out so far for Muslim votes (as evidenced by her stipends to Imams and Muezzins, Muslim reservation, her offering Namaz and wearing Hijab, and saying Inshallah, etc.) that even an olive FOREST, not to speak of a branch, could not draw her into a PRE-POLL alliance with BJP. What she will do POST-POLL will depend ENTIRELY on numbers in the new Lok Sabha, and not one bit on who held out how many olive branches before polls. If she does badly in the Panchayat polls, she might again ally with the Congress PRE-POLL, but never with BJP. One must realize that she is a COMPLETELY self-centred person and doesn't give a damn about niceties or returning favours.
Then why did the central leadership ask us to withdraw? The principal reason, as Siddharth explained, is that BJP is seeking the Prime minister's resignation and polls in November, and running for elections now would be inconsistent with such a stand. A secondary but important reason is the resources position. West Bengal BJP is cash-starved, and has important commitments. The central BJP also is not exactly swimming in money -- unlike the Congress or even the CPI(M) and Trinamool. In such circumstances running for a Lok Sabha that may not last even six months may be pointless.
Therefore, while fully realizing that our media friends will put a pro-Trinamool spin to this and it may demoralize our party cadres, our central leaders took this stand.
We in the state party will later decide what to tell our supporters as to who to vote for. We may tell them to support an independent, follow their consciences, or not to vote at all.
I still won't say this gets me completely out of my depression. But enough to get up and apply myself to party work with renewed vigour.

BJP Memorandum to Hon'ble Governor

Dated 7th May, 2013

Shri M. K. Narayanan
Hon’ble Governor of West Bengal
Raj Bhawan
Kolkata – 700 062

Respected Sir,

You must be aware of the greatest financial scandal which has rocked West Bengal and other adjacent states and where the names of prominent leaders and ministers of ruling party along with leaders & ex-Ministers of CPI (M) and a few Congress leaders have come up. The State Government has alreadily formed an Enquiry Commission headed by ex-Justice Shyamal Kumar Sen, which had started taking stock of the situation ( under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952). As preliminary enquiry shows that the depository amount have been siphoned to other states and even to other nations, hence SIT cannot be competent enough to enquire. Hence CBI is the only competent authority to investigate this case properly. We have met Justice Shyamal Kumar Sen at his Commission on 30th April, 2013 and during discussions he also pledged his inability to investigate into such dimension. CBI has also pledged to investigate through their affidavit in Hon’ble Kolkata High Court.

Further more, State Governments of Assam, Bihar, Tripura, who are also affected through this scam has asked for CBI enquiry, then why our Hon’ble Chief Minister, who, when in the opposition bench, often have demanded for CBI, is now not interested in CBI enquiry? Is it because she wishes to hide the truth? Whatever may be the reason, we also have reservations in CBI functioning, but to solve this case and to confiscate the entire empire of Saradha and to pay the investor back from confiscation and auctioneering their properties, CBI is the only solution. Moreover, it is being said that at least Rs.35,000 crores have been invested in Saradha group by poor and lower middle class category and our Chief Minister is trying to raise Rs.150 crore from Tobacco Tax to provide them relief. Is it really a mockery?

In the Parliament 73 illegal chit fund companies were mentioned. But as many as 2,000 big or small illegal money laundering funds are presently in operation in West Bengal. It may also be mentioned that our state is industry-barren and it has a load of more than 1 crore jobless youths. It may be worthwhile to mention that millions of people of varied educational background work in those illegal money laundering funds either as agent or as staff. Hence if we close all money laundering funds without checking their system of work, then a further flood of jobless people would detoriate our law and order situation and a number of people might commit suicide, which has alreadily started. Hence a system should be generated to protect the money of poor and lower middle class people along with protection of thousands of people earning their bread and butter from these companies.

It may also be noted that the State Government is yet to file any case against Saradha or any such illegal money laundering Companies and our Chief Minister is openly saying that these companies are registered under Companies Act and hence the State Government cannot take any action unless a case is registered. We may kindly inform you that AMRI is a registered company and during the AMRI Dhakuria inferno, this Chief Minister has ordered arrests of all the directors of AMRI without any case registration. We, through you, demand immediate arrest of all the Directors and CEOs of Saradha and confiscation of all their properties. The sooner it is done, the better is the chance of recovery.

Hence, it should be worthwhile to use SEBI as a watchdog and to critically investigate the performance of each money laundering fund and to take necessary actions against the law breakers. The reason being, for example, if all the depositors of any nationalized Bank go to collect their deposit in a single day, the Bank will collapse. Similarly, if all the depositors demand their money from any such company, the company directors have no other way but to flee and the investors money will never be recovered.

So it should be the duty of the SEBI and other central Financial agencies along with the State Government to be a watchdog and allow them to work legally so that the depositors can get their money back in right time. We may, at the same time, like to brief you that the same type of monetary scandal happened between 1980 & 2003, i.e. during Left Front regime, through Sanchaita, Sanchayani, Favourite, Overland, all the cases have simply been disappeared without any arrest, without any payment to the investors.

We once again request you to immediately press this government for CBI enquiry.

Regards,
Sincerely yours,

Rahul Sinha, (State President)
Prabhakar Tewari, Dr. Subhas Sarkar, Badsha Alam (Vice Presidents)
Rabin Chatterjee, Ashim Sarkar (General Secretaries)
Ritesh Tewari, Kamal Beriwal (Secretaries)

Tathagata speaks

Yesterday I was a little taken aback at the sight of our Chief Minister. I came back from Delhi late in the evening and got to see the morning papers only then. Look up her picture in http://www.anandabazar.com/archive/1130505/5raj1.html . Does she look quite normal? She further says, "Amake CBI diye chomkaben na". 'Chomkano', as a synonym for 'bhoy dekhano' in Bengali is not quite civilized speech-certainly not expected from a Chief Minister, however much 'matir kachhakachhi' she is.

Attended a very fruitful party seminar in Delhi, which was addressed by leaders such as Advaniji, Dattatreya Hosabale, Shanta Kumar, etc. I spoke on the 'Interaction between Indian Religions and Semitic religions' and emphasized the essential difference between the two sets: that, while the former believes in the motto ‘we’ll mind our business, let them mind theirs’, or 'live and let live', and make no concerted effort to spread or proselytize, Christianity and Islam (not Judaism), by far presently the more dominant Semitic faiths are proselytizing religions to the hilt. They believe in conversion, and also believe that unless a person is converted he cannot be ‘saved’ – presumably from hell-fire. There have been tussles between Islam and Christianity on the one hand and Indian-origin faiths on the other, and some of the tussles have been bloody, and some very very bloody. This is history-absolutely incorrect to pretend that such bloody tussles never happened. However, I emphasized, that it is incorrect to equate the two proselytizing Semitic faiths, paint them with the same brush. This approach may give rise to costly mistakes. The interaction of faiths between Indian-origin faiths and Semitic faiths is required to be studied strictly separately for Islam and Christianity.

The principal differences in approach of Christian and Islamic proselytization, according to my perception, are the following:
(a) Christianity has proselytized mostly by persuasion, which at times has included deceit or money; Islam, mostly by force.
(b) Their attitudes towards women are very different.
(c) Christianity is not something immutable, and changes with time, which is a feature it shares with Indian faiths. Just as Hindus no longer practice suttee (widow-burning), likewise Christians do not burn heretics at the stakes as they did to Joan of Arc. However Islam is not only immutable, but takes pride in being so. The Hadith, or Islamic Traditions, are next only to the Qur’an in terms of sacredness to Muslims, and teach how the Prophet had acted, what he said, and what was done in his presence without his disapproval. Every devout Muslim is required to follow these Traditions. They contain provisions such as stoning to death for adultery – for which the punishment prescribed by the Indian Penal Code is only five years of imprisonment, and that too only for the male in case of adultery with a married woman. Adultery is not a criminal offence in most countries where Christianity is the dominant faith.
(d) Christianity does not imply internationalism, which Islam does (and interestingly, so does Communism). There is no Christian Jahan or Umma, and an Indian Christian, however devout, is not particularly upset by some Christian in some neighbouring country being killed or subjected to some injustice or some church being attacked. As everyone knows, this is not the case with Muslims – all the cases of anti-Hindu pogroms in Pakistan and Bangladesh have started with some real or imagined news about ‘Islam being in danger’ in India.

These are some of the features that have to be remembered while considering interaction. The entire point of my talk was to underscore the facts that (a) We have to live in India in amity among all religions (b) to do that it is necessary to put a stop to proselytization (c) it is incorrect to hide history and pretend everything has been smooth in this interaction and (d) the two Semitic religions will have to be looked at separately.

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