War of words between BJP, TMC over Waqf Bill protests

Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party stepped up its tirade against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government over the violent protests against the new Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, even as her Trinamool Congress accused the saffron party and its leaders of running an “industrial scale” disinformation campaign using “fake photos” to “inflame communal tension” in the state.

The BJP took out a rally in Kolkata, criticising the TMC government for its policy of appeasement and for the atrocities on the Hindus in Murshidabad in West Bengal during protests against the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025.

The saffron party also slammed the government for the Supreme Court’s April 3 verdict invalidating the appointment of 25,752 government school employees due to irregularities in the recruitment process by the School Services Commission (SSC) in 2016.

The BJP’s three heavyweights – Leader of the Opposition in the legislative assembly Suvendu Adhikari, the party’s state president Sukanta Majumdar and his predecessor Dilip Ghosh – led the rally in a rare display of unity within the principal opposition party in the state, just about a year away from the assembly polls.

The TMC, however, sought to turn the tables on the BJP, accusing the saffron party’s leaders of posting fake photos of violent protests from Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka on social media to disturb communal harmony in West Bengal.

“This is (the) BJP's campaign of lies, communal polarisation, and politics of incitement,” Sagarika Ghose, a TMC member in the Rajya Sabha, alleged, reacting to a social media post by the state unit of the saffron party showing nine pictures of violent protests. The TMC claimed that the pictures were not related to the recent incident in Murshidabad.

“The violence in Murshidabad has been deeply unfortunate. The Bengal government is clear that no one will be allowed to take the law into their hands, and violence will be met with strict punishment, irrespective of the community or religious identity of the perpetrators. However, the BJP, at the moment, is engaging in the politics of religious polarisation and incitement,” she posted on X.

“Thousands of innocent Hindus are being hunted out of their homes, clinging to life, running from jihadist mobs, becoming refugees in their own land. Bengal is bleeding,” Majumdar, the union minister of state for education, posted on X.

He took a jibe at the TMC’s member in the Rajya Sabha, Derek O’Brien, for posting a picture of his own lunch at a time when Hindus, who had been displaced by violent protests during protests against the new law, were “screaming for help”.

Ghosh, the former state BJP president, called Banerjee a “job-stealer” and a “killer of Hindus”, demanding her resignation from the office of the chief minister.

“Everyone (who participated in the BJP rally) voiced the same demand – the resignation of the ‘murderous’ chief minister,” he posted on X, adding that people had now recognized the ‘true face’ of Banerjee.

Adhikari alleged that the West Bengal police had not adequately dealt with the radicals even after the protesters, agitating against the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, turned violent and targeted the Hindus in Murshidabad.

“Appeasement politics of TMC have emboldened radical elements. Hindus are being hunted; our people are running for their lives in their own land! Shame on the state government for allowing this breakdown of law and order,” said the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly. “Bengal is burning. The social fabric is torn. Enough is enough.”

Kunal Ghosh, a senior TMC leader, alleged that the photographs posted by the BJP leaders to depict violence in Murshidabad were of unrelated incidents in various other places, including Assam, Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), Jalandhar (Punjab), and Karnataka.

“Political parties that cannot win democratically are indulging in such plots to disturb peace,” he alleged, adding that the BJP was also misusing central agencies.

Khalilur Rahman, a TMC member in the Lok Sabha, said that the violence during the protests against the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, in Murshidabad on Friday and Saturday had been triggered by “outsiders”.

To buttress his claim, the TMC cited the video of Arjun Singh, a leader of the BJP, threatening to bring in people from other states to the Murshidabad and Malda districts of West Bengal.