Army raises objection with Bengal Guv over Mamata Banerjee's remarks on Fort William officer

Kolkata: The Indian Army’s Eastern Command has sought the intervention of West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose in connection with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s recent allegation that a senior army officer was using the command base at Fort William and working on the SIR exercise at the behest of the BJP.

According to a senior official at the Lok Bhavan, two Army generals from Fort William, the command headquarters, met Governor Bose last week and submitted a communication which reportedly objected to Banerjee’s claims.

Although the details of what transpired at the meeting were not immediately clear, the Lok Bhavan official said that Bose had taken serious note of the matter and brought it to the attention of competent authorities at the Centre.

“The army officers are understood to have spoken to the Governor and requested his intervention in the matter. The Army is peeved with the chief minister’s recent remarks suggesting that a commandant of the forces was working for the BJP while remaining posted at Fort William,” the official told PTI.

Without elucidating further details on the identity of the officer concerned, the chief minister claimed on January 13 that the Army personnel was using the command base to carry out political activities in the wake of the controversial SIR of electoral rolls in the state.

"I have information that a commandant at Fort William is working on SIR to lend support to the BJP. He is sitting there and doing the work of the BJP party office. I request them with folded hands to desist from such activities," Banerjee had said while addressing a press conference from the state secretariat, Nabanna.

Following last week’s meeting at the Lok Bhavan, it is understood that the Bengal Governor has approached the Defence Ministry in this connection and has brought to its notice the gravity of the matter, the official said.

"Let me first verify for myself what she said. If this violates any constitutional propriety, I will certainly intervene," Bose had said earlier when asked to respond to Banerjee’s comments.

When contacted, a senior official at Fort William confirmed that the meeting had taken place at the Lok Bhavan.

“Two of our officers met the honourable governor recently regarding the comments made by the honourable chief minister of West Bengal. They discussed the issue with the honourable governor, who assured them that he would look into the matter,” the official said.

In an already charged political atmosphere in poll-bound Bengal, where the ongoing Election Commission’s exercise of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has drawn up sharp fault lines between the ruling TMC and its prime challenger BJP, with the Left and Congress also throwing their hats in the ring, Banerjee's comments triggered sharp reactions from across parties.

"Mamata Banerjee thinks she can say anything because she considers herself the President of West Bengal,” Samik Bhattacharya, president of the BJP's Bengal unit, sarcastically said when asked to respond to Banerjee's allegation.

"She doesn't consider West Bengal a state within India; she thinks of Bengal as a sovereign nation and herself its president," Bhattacharya continued, dismissing the CM’s remarks as “baseless”.

Calling Banerjee's allegation a "serious issue", CPI(M) state secretary Md Salim had maintained that the chief minister must pursue the truth behind this, write to the Defence Minister and prove the truth in her statement.

"This is an absolutely serious issue. We must find out the truth behind this allegation," the Left leader had said.