I don't need to steal': Mamata rubbishes allegation of theft of neem wood from Puri for Digha temple

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday dismissed the allegation of the Bharatiya Janata Party that the idols consecrated at the Lord Jagannatha temple, built by her Trinamool Congress government in the state, had been crafted with wood stolen from the 12th-century shrine at Puri in Odisha.

The TMC supremo also hit out at the BJP government in Odisha over reports of Bengali-speaking migrant workers being assaulted in the neighbouring state.

She reminded the governments of other states that 1.5 crore migrant workers from across the country were also living in West Bengal. “We will not harass them (migrants from other states). This is the difference between other states and West Bengal.”

She said that the state’s police chief, Rajeev Kumar, would get in touch with his counterpart in Odisha and request them to ensure the security of the migrant workers from West Bengal.

“I have four neem trees at my own home,” Banerjee told journalists in Murshidabad, stressing the ubiquity of the plant in the wake of the probe launched by the BJP government in Odisha into the allegation that the sacred wood from the ancient shrine of Lord Jagannatha in Puri had been transported to West Bengal without any authorisation to craft the idols, which had later been consecrated at the new temple built at Digha on the shore of Bay of Bengal. “I am still not in such dire straits that I would have to get neem wood stolen.”

Banerjee inaugurated the new temple of Lord Jagannatha in Digha on April 30.

“Why did the construction of the new temple of Lord Jagannatha hurt them (the BJP and the Government of Odisha) so much? Why are they so jealous? Is it a crime to worship Lord Jagannatha in West Bengal?” she wondered, responding to the BJP’s campaign against the new shrine built by the TMC government in Digha.

Nudged by the BJP government in Odisha, the Sri Jagannatha Temple Authority (SJTA) in Puri launched a probe to find out whether some of the sacred wood, which had remained unused since the making of the new idols of the deities for the ancient shrine in 2015, had been transported without authorisation to Digha.

The allegation stemmed from the statement made by one of the servitors of the Lord Jagannatha temple in Puri, Ramakrushna Dasmohapatra, also known as Rajesh Daitapati, who was involved in overseeing the construction and consecration of the new shrine in West Bengal. He purportedly told a TV channel that some of the unused sacred wood from Puri had been used to make idols of the deities of the new shrine in Digha.

He was questioned by the SJTA officials on Sunday.

The BJP has been accusing the TMC of trying to use the temple to gloss over its “failure in protecting the Hindus of West Bengal from persecution” and of pursuing “a policy of appeasement” to keep intact the party’s “vote-bank among the Muslims”.

Suvendu Adhikari, a senior BJP leader in West Bengal, said that the “unauthorised use of surplus sacred wood” from the 12th-century temple of Lord Jagannatha at Puri in Odisha to make the idols of the deities consecrated at the new shrine in Digha was a disgraceful conduct and an affront to ethics, morality and centuries-old culture and traditions.

Adhikar, the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, and the other BJP leaders also criticised the TMC government in West Bengal for referring to the new shrine as a ‘dham’, pointing out that Hindu religious texts recognised only four ‘dhams’ – Dwarka, Badrinath, Puri and Rameshwaram – and no new temple could be called a ‘dham’.

“There are temples of Shiva, Kali and other gods and goddesses everywhere in the country. There is nothing wrong in it,” Banerjee said, countering the BJP’s campaign.