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Trinamool ex-spokesman Riju Dutta is apologising to UP IPS officer Ajay Pal Sharma. Here's why
Dutta's apology, delivered in a video, came with a caveat; he said he was acting on the advice of "senior BJP leaders from Uttar Pradesh" and legal counsel.
Riju Dutta, recently suspended from the Trinamool Congress whose national spokesperson he was, issued an unconditional public apology on X on Sunday to Uttar Pradesh IPS officer Ajay Pal Sharma — a man he had attacked on camera just weeks ago, on behalf of his party. The party led by Mamata Banerjee has since lost to the BJP, the ruling party of UP and the Centre.
Dutta's apology, delivered in a video statement, came with a caveat; he said he was acting on the advice of "senior BJP leaders from Uttar Pradesh" and his legal counsel. He stressed, more than once, that the original remarks were not personal, and that the video in which he attacked Sharma was recorded at the TMC headquarters, in his capacity as national spokesman, following party line, and released through the party's official social media handles.
"This was not a personal comment," he said. He then described himself as "an ordinary person" hoping to “live peacefully with my family and continue my livelihood”. He hoped the matter would “end permanently”, speaking and captioning the video in Hindi.
What Dutta had originally said
In late April, the Election Commission of India deployed Ajay Pal Sharma — a 2011-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, currently posted as additional commissioner of police in Prayagraj — as police observer for South 24 Parganas ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections.
Sharma made headlines immediately as he visited the residence of TMC second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee's close aide and TMC candidate Jehangir Khan after complaints of voter intimidation. He issued an on-camera warning to Khan's family, and the footage went viral as evidence of alleged “excess” by forces that otherwise report to the BJP regime. The BJP hailed Ajay Sharma as UP's "Singham", a reference to Ajay Devgn's vigilance cop character from a movie by that name.
The TMC was furious, and Dutta was the party's frontman on the issue. He called Sharma “(UP CM) Yogi Adityanath's trigger-happy cowboy”; said he had been “parachuted in by the Election Commission”; and accused him of fake encounters and corruption. The video was amplified across TMC's official handles.
Then came the election result
When votes were counted on May 4, the BJP won 207 seats in a House of 294. The TMC collapsed to 80, ending its 15-year rule.
Within 48 hours, cracks appeared publicly inside the TMC, with Dutta as the face of the splintering this time.
Dutta posted a video saying that when his in-laws were attacked on counting day, May 4, by what he called “self-proclaimed BJP workers who had actually switched camps from TMC”, he made calls to senior TMC leaders and “received no response”. The people who stepped in to stop the situation from escalating were BJP leaders, he said. He called it “a sin not to confess” that.
He also publicly praised the BJP government's measures to control post-poll violence — a statement TMC deemed anti-party.
TMC crackdown before apology
The TMC's disciplinary committee, led by MP Derek O'Brien, issued show-cause notices to five spokespersons within days, asking why action should not be taken for “breach of party discipline”. Responses were demanded within 24 hours.
On May 9, Dutta, along with spokesmen Kohinoor Majumdar and Kartik Ghosh, was suspended for six years. Majumdar had publicly complained that party leaders were made to wait hours to meet Abhishek Banerjee. Ghosh had criticised the leadership's campaign strategy.
As for Dutta, Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya has already suggested publicly that Dutta may be “eyeing a future in the BJP”, following the suspended leader's recent praise of Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari. Dutta has not commented on that.
