Babul row: BJP leader threatens leftist ‘mercenaries’

Kolkata, Sep 20 (IANS) A senior BJP leader in West Bengal on Friday threatened to beat up the leftist “mercenaries” who assaulted Union Minister Babul Supriyo in Jadavpur University and said he would have been happier had the attackers been roughed up on Thursday itself.
“I don’t know whether any of the attackers were beaten up. If those who attacked Babul Supriyo were beaten up, then I would have been happier.
“The uncivilized Leftist mercenaries of Jadavpur University who assaulted Babul Supriyo should have been flung on the ground and beaten up. The beatings will start today,” state BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu told the media while taking part in a protest march organized by the BJP from its state party headquarters here.
Basu alleged that the Left activists had attacked Supriyo with the ‘active cooperation’ of the police and administration.
“Had the governor not rushed to the university, we wouldn’t have been able to get back Babul alive,” he said.
He said the incident was a further proof that there was no law and order in the state.
Supriyo was on Thursday heckled, slapped, punched and detained for over six hours by radical Left students in the campus, where he had gone to attend a freshers’ welcome and address a seminar on the National Register of Citizens organized by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
After over six hours, Supriyo was “rescued” by state governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who drove to the university escorted by a large police force, and brought the union minister out of the campus in his car.
However, on his arrival, Dhankhar was also stranded for close to an hour in the campus as the radical Left protesters held a sit-in demonstration and even lay prostrate before his vehicle

Students, political activists hit the streets
Political temperatures shot up in the metropolis on Friday as political activists and students hit the streets, a day after Union Minister Babul Supriyo was heckled and assaulted by radical Left students in Jadavpur University for hours, following which ABVP workers went on a rampage and vandalized a students union room.
The radical Left students took out a three-kilometer long march from the university campus to Gol Park protesting against ABVP’s “vandalism” and the manner in which the Union Minister “provoked” students on Thursday.
Students from the varsity’s arts, engineering and science faculties took part in the march.
They alleged that on Thursday, Supriyo made sexist remarks and “went on provoking us”.
The students representing radical Left associations and the CPI-M affiliated Students Federation of India (SFI) had originally planned to shout “go back” slogans and show black flags to the Union Minister, but things got out of hand when Supriyo pushed some students, they said.
The students said they were “worried” over their security and “deeply pained” by the vandalism let loose by the ABVP on Thursday evening.
“The SFI’s union room has been vandalized, and the furniture, ceiling fan, and computers smashed. The wall of the room has also been defaced. They also beat up a shop keeper with rods and sticks and threw stones at us,” said a student taking part in the march.
The SFI organized a protest rally from Dhakuria to the university campus – a distance of about two kilometres – in solidarity with university students and for resisting “fascist hooliganism in the campus”.
“One Union Minister came to the campus and provoked and incited the students. The BJP’s hooligans damaged the union room. They carried BJP and ABVP flags, acid bulbs, bamboo poles and rods. They beat up people,” said SFI leader Samanyay Raha.
The ABVP, on the other hand, held a sit-in at the base of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in central Kolkata’s Dorina Crossing demanding the resignation of the university Vice Chancellor and arrest of all those who assaulted Supriyo.
“We will continue the sit-in till our demands are met,” said an ABVP activist.
Denying that their activists had vandalized the union room or beaten up anybody, an ABVP member alleged that that the Leftist student activists themselves did the act to put the blame on his organization.
Meanwhile, the BJP brought out a rally from its headquarters at Muralidhar Sen Lane. Party’s state General Secretaries Sayantan Basu and Raju Bandopadhyay led the rally.

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