There is more embarrassment for the Trinamool Congress after a new video emerged of party leader Tapas Pal delivering another inflammatory speech in a village in West Bengal. Pal is seen urging villagers to take up sharp weapons to behead CPI workers if needed. The TMC leader is also seen assuring villagers protection for attacking CPI members.
Pal had made these statements on the same day when he had threatened to send his boys to rape women in the Opposition. His rape comment has been downplayed by TMC chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who said that the statement was a small thing.
Mamata has accused the media of blowing the matter out of proportion with the aim to malign her party and government. Addressing an official programme, Mamata said while “good work” was never publicised, small matters were getting highlighted.
“Now, as you can see, if you do some good work that is never publicised. But if somebody does something small, or even if somebody does not do it, everybody is out with a vengeance,” Mamata said during a function at Nazrul Mancha.
“A campaign of canard and misinformation is being carried out against us in a planted way. It may well be, that you don’t even know what has happened.”
“So, in such a scenario, you should keep in mind that we have to on our own arrange for ways and means to defend ourselves,” she said.
The Lok Sabha member from Krishnanagar in Nadia district, Pal was earlier caught on video tapes threatening and warning Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) cadres to beware of him and that he would gun them down and unleash his men to rape their women. Repeatedly using expletives to describe CPI-M activists, Pal even asked his partymen and women to prove themselves by slitting rivals’ throats and killing them.
Drawing flak from one and all, Pal later issued an apology letter, terming his comments a “gross error of judgment” and “deeply insensitive”.
The Trinamool says that the matter has ended with Pal’s unconditional apology, but the opposition parties in the state are seeking administrative action including arrest of Pal, a leading actor of Bengali films. There have also been calls for his expulsion from the Lok Sabha.
