BJP’s West Bengal Rath Yatra: Mamata Government Resorts To 2019 Tactics

The West Bengal government has asked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to approach local authorities in the districts concerned for getting permission for the state-wide Ratha Yatra that the BJP has planned to take out.

The Bengal unit of the BJP on February 1 wrote to state chief secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay seeking permission for taking out a Ratha Yatra across the state during February and March. It said five separate Yatras will together cover all of the state’s 294 Assembly constituencies.

The duration of each Yatra will be between 20 and 25 days and the five Yatras would run simultaneously, the letter by BJP state unit vice president Pratap Banerjee said.

Of the five Yatras, one was to start from Nabadwip in Nadia district and end at Barrackpore in the neighbouring district of North 24-Parganas; one would start from Cooch Behar town and end in Malda town, covering north Bengal; one would cover from Kakdwip in South 24-Parganas district to Kolkata; one from Jhargram to Belur in Howrah district and the other from Tarapith in Birbhum to Purulia district.

Responding to this, the special secretary to the government of West Bengal wrote to Banerjee on February 2, “You may instead approach the appropriate authorities at local levels entrusted with maintenance of law and order including assemblies and processions etc. under relevant laws/ regulations.”

This means the BJP will have to approach every police station through which their Yatra will pass. This process would be more time consuming, and objections from one or two police stations on the proposed routes could force the BJP to change root plans multiple times.

Meanwhile a public interest litigation was filed in the Calcutta high court on Wednesday by advocate Ramaprasad Sarkar, who urged that such a Yatra be not allowed since it could lead to deterioration of the law-and-order situation. The PIL is likely to be heard on Thursday.
Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Mamata Banerjee government had similarly asked the BJP to seek permission at the local level for each and every phase of their proposed Yatra instead of seeking permission for the whole from the state secretariat. The BJP’s initial plan was to start three Yatras from three corners of the state in November 2018. A legal battle that ensued saw the West Bengal government winning the case in the Supreme Court, foiling the BJP’s plan of taking out the Rath Yatra.

Political analysts said the BJP’s plan would put the government to a critical test, as one of the major concerns of the state’s ruling party is not to allow the BJP to polarise Hindu votes in their favour.

“If the state government denies permission to the Rath Yatra, it could prove to be counter-productive, as the BJP might be able to intensify its campaign that the Mamata Banerjee government was depriving the Hindus to please the Muslims,” said Biswanath Chakraborty, a professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata.

A senior TMC leader, however, said that the government had to find a middle path or get the judiciary involved.

“Allowing the Rath Yatra will enable the Left and the Congress to campaign among the Muslims that the TMC had surrendered before Hindu majoritarianism. We also have to keep in mind that the Yatra could be planned through communally sensitive areas and any small incident of clash could leave the state polarised on communal lines,” said a TMC Rajya Sabha MP who did not want to be named.