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BJP minister’s jingle, a poem and ‘veiled threat’ warm up Bengal poll run
Charges of violation of the model code of conduct are piling up thick and fast even before many parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), name their candidates for Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha (LS) seats. Causing outrage is – among others - a music video featuring a song by the BJP’s Asansol MP and former playback singer Babul Supriyo, who is also a union minister of state.
Charges of violation of the model code of conduct are piling up thick and fast even before many parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), name their candidates for Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha (LS) seats.
Causing outrage is – among others - a music video featuring a song by the BJP’s Asansol MP and former playback singer Babul Supriyo, who is also a union minister of state.
“Didi pore Hawaii chati, Bhayera sob kotipati…… Kalighate talir chala, oi choreder pathsala”, trills Supriyo, about how “‘Didi’ (Mamata) wears rubber flip-flops even though her brothers are all millionaires.” Another line from the song derides Banerjee’s Kalighat home as a “school for thieves.”
The Trinamool (TMC) is furious and let the Election Commission (EC) know it, which, in turn, on Tuesday asked Supriyo to explain the video’s appearance on the social media without the EC’s clearance. “I didn’t upload it. The media were present when the video was being filmed in Mumbai,” Supriyo said.
In Birbhum district, it’s a satirical poem that’s at the centre of the squabble between the BJP and the TMC. “Dekh khule tor teen nayan, rashta jure kharga hate, dariye achhe unnayan” (“If you open your eyes you will see development -the chief minister’s favourite agenda - standing on the road with sword in hand), Bengal’s most revered octogenarian poet, Sankha Ghosh, had written as a scathing comment on the violence and murders that had marked rural elections last year. The poem was quickly adopted by the opposition to attack the TMC. The ruling party is now using the same poem as election graffiti.
“Sankha Ghosh is no poet but he is right,” said TMC’s local firebrand leader Anubrata Mondal.”Look outside, you’ll see development on every street,” he quipped.
Mondal’s other remark had the BJP pulling the trigger and crying foul. The TMC leader said that his party cadres would hand out nakuldana (a local candy said to resemble a small bullet) to voters to ensure the TMC’s victory. Not a sweet offer but a ‘veiled threat’ which implies that those who do not choose the TMC will be met by bullets, the BJP said.
The parties are even appealing to ineligible voters. BJP leaders complained to the EC about TMC’s Dum Dum MP Saugata Roy, who allegedly distributed plastic water guns to kids on the impending occasion of the Holi festival. The saffron party also gave the EC a video clip and alleged that the TMC’s north Bengal development minister Rabindranath Ghosh had threatened voters in Cooch Behar on Tuesday by telling them not to be afraid of the Center’s paramilitary forces on guard, when they go to vote. “Remember, they (the forces) will leave, but you have to live here forever,” Ghosh is seen as saying on the clip.
