Bengal floods: BJP leaders Manoj Oraon and Sikha Chatterjee face protests; Mamata Banerjee visits Khagen Murmu

Kolkata: Two more Bharatiya Janata Party legislators faced protests in the deluged districts in North Bengal, even as the chief minister and the ruling Trinamool Congress supremo, Mamata Banerjee, went to the hospital and met the saffron party’s parliamentarian, Khagen Murmu, on Tuesday, a day after he had been attacked by an irate mob.

Mamata enquired about the medical care being provided to Murmu, who had suffered an injury on his face when the protesters had pelted stones at his car and broken its windshield. Murmu had been accompanied by Shankar Ghosh, a member of the state legislative assembly, who had also been injured and had been admitted to the same hospital in Siliguri. The chief minister, however, met the BJP parliamentarian only and requested him to let her know if the state government could do anything to ensure his medical care in a better facility.     

She met Murmu in the hospital even as the BJP raised the pitch of its campaign, accusing the TMC of orchestrating the attack on the saffron party’s leaders. The TMC, on the other hand, slammed the BJP-led government in Tripura for the vandalisation of the office of Mamata’s party in Agartala, the capital of the northeastern state, by a group of the saffron party’s workers, who were protesting against the assault on Murmu and Ghosh.

The Lok Sabha secretariat asked the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to seek a note on the attack on the BJP parliamentarian.

The attack on Murmu and Ghosh had triggered a war of words between Mamata and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on X on Monday.

Suvendu Adhikari, the state BJP heavyweight and the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, hit out at the TMC government for the failure of the police in arresting the people, who had attacked the party’s leaders when they had gone to Nagrakata in Jalpaiguri on Monday. He alleged that the attackers of Murmu and Ghosh might include “jihadi elements”.

Two more BJP legislators – Manoj Oraon and Sikha Chatterjee – faced protests by the people when they visited the flood-hit villages in their constituencies.

The TMC alleged that the people of disaster-hit North Bengal had given vent to their disappointment with the BJP leaders, whom they had sent to the Lok Sabha and the state assembly. The party, however, condemned the violent attacks.  

Adhikari, on Tuesday, accompanied Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju to the worst-affected areas in Mirik and Darjeeling and met the people displaced by landslides caused by heavy downpour between late Saturday and early Sunday.

Mamata, who has been visiting disaster-hit North Bengal since Monday, also visited Mirik on Tuesday.

The death toll due to the calamity rose to 30, but at least four people remained missing, according to the officials of the state government.