Mamata should be wary of BJP tactics

Will West Bengal ever get out of its election mode? It seems no. The reason being far greater politicisation of the State, there is little chance of it to get out the spiralling violence.

With both the BJP and the TMC leadership being bent upon imposing their leadership on the people and the process of subjugation that those two have adopted to retain control over the psyche of West Bengal, violence is only expected to rise here.

Somehow, every party seems to believe, in the State at least, that violent means and methods are the first resort and not the last to gain an upper hand in politics. If violence by the TMC has driven the CPM cadres to shut down offices and run for life in the last five years, the counter violence of the BJP has attracted them to the fold of the challenger to queer the pitch for the TMC.

Mamata Banerjee is somehow different from the others and does not take a no in response to anything she does. This is offering the BJP an opportunity to provoke her with anything and everything.

A greeting used by the people in the country for centuries in honour and respect of the 'Maryada Purushottam Ram" - Jai Shree Ram - should not have been politicised as happened in West Bengal.

After all Lord Rama is not just venerable in India but across several other countries including Muslim majority countries. As the BJP taunts Mamata with the slogan nowadays, she has also adopted an extreme stand calling those who chant the slogans as 'criminals and outsiders'.

Thus, Mamata is slowly getting caught in the quagmire of politics. The BJP is prepared for the worst and would go to make 'Jai Shree Ram" a war cry not only in West Bengal but also elsewhere for electoral benefits.

Hence, the more Mamata Banerjee charges - as seen in the visuals of the channels - at the sloganeering BJP hoodlums surrounded by the police, the greater the damage to her image.

The BJP's ploy is very simple: they want to drag her into the controversy further to project her as anti-Ram and anti-Hindu more and more. She should, instead, concentrate on governance. Law and order problem is a major problem now in the State and any lapse will easily be attributed to her.

The BJP is just waiting for an opportunity to destablise her government and she should not play into her hands. Mamata should keep in mind the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already claimed, during his election campaign, that 40 of her legislators were in touch with him.

It might be just a ploy to disturb her during the elections, but it is the intent that should not be missed out.

The leadership of the BJP is firm in its conviction that it would and could wrest Bengal from Mamata as both the CPM and the Congress are nowhere in the picture due to various reasons. Assembly elections are not far away and Mamata must not lose sight of the same.