After a thumping victory in the Lok Sabha elections, Narendra Modi will be taking oath as Prime Minister of India for his second term at 7 pm on Thursday. Fifty-four special guests, besides leaders from BIMSTEC countries and a host of celebrities and politicians, would be attending the swearing-in ceremony.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who had also confirmed her presence in the swearing-in ceremony, evidently irked by PM Modi’s ‘special invitees‘ later took a complete U-turn. She took to Twitter to declare that her decision of not attending the swearing-in ceremony was prompted by the BJP’s decision to invite families of 54 victims of political violence in Bengal.
https://twitter.com/MamataOfficial/status/1133656252381184001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As a mark of respect, BJP had invited, kins of over 50 BJP workers who have lost their lives in West Bengal political violence over the months, to the swearing-in ceremony of the Prime Minister and his cabinet.
Mamata in her Tweet had completely disregarded BJP’ claims by saying, “This (political violence) is completely untrue. There have been no political murders in Bengal.” adding that “The (oath-taking) ceremony is an august occasion to celebrate democracy, not one that should be devalued by any political party which uses it as an opportunity to score political points”.
However, Mamata Banerjee forgets that unlike her citizens of India do not have such a short-lived memory. A glimpse at the past reveals that Banerjee had herself invited victims of violence in Singur and Nandigram during her oath-taking in 2011.
As per reports, among the 3,000 people in her swearing-in ceremony, were kins of victims of violence of Nandigram and Singur. She had alleged then, that CPI(M) cadres had murdered innocent land-losers in those two areas and had blamed the outgoing Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for the violence.
The Nandigram violence was an incident in Nandigram in West Bengal, in the aftermath of a failed project by the Government of West-Bengal under the erstwhile Communist rule to acquire land for SEZ (Special Economic Zone).
Mamata Banerjee and her political party had widely used this issue along with the political war cry Ma Mati Manush in their election campaigns. In fact, she on the occasion of Nandigram Divas in 2017 had called the incident “violent politics of the CPI(M)”.
She was soon called out for her own hypocrisy. BJP IT cell in-charge, Amit Malviya took to Twitter to remind Mamata Banerjee of her double-standards. He wrote that her own oath-taking on May 20, 2011, was attended by the families of “victims of political violence in Nandigram and Singur”.
https://twitter.com/amitmalviya/status/1133740620445622273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Mamata’s present statement that BJP’s move to invite the families of its party workers who were slain in the violence as ‘devaluing an august ceremony’ reeks of hypocrisy.