COOCH BEHAR: Three
Trinamool Congress offices were vandalised, allegedly by
BJP supporters, in North Bengal development department minister
Rabindranath Ghosh
’s home turf, Natabari, late on Friday and on Saturday morning. Five persons have been arrested.
Tension had been building up at Natabari for two days after Ghosh’s men shoved a person who had walked up to him during his ‘DidiKeBolo’ campaign to complain against TMC leaders taking ‘cut money’. Following this, BJP supporters allegedly attacked the Trinamool office in Natabari I panchayat.
They reassembled on Saturday morning and laid siege to party offices in the Balarampur I and II gram panchayat area. A few Trinamool activists were beaten up. A large force from Tufanganj police station arrived and put up a picket.
“BJP cadres attacked our party office at Natabari when everyone was asleep. People who voted for change in the
Lok Sabha
polls have started realizing what a blunder they made by voting for BJP. The attack shows BJP has started losing ground here. It’s only a matter of time before people are back with us,” Ghosh said.
BJP Cooch Behar president Malati Rava Roy denied the claim, saying locals had vandalized the offices to protest TMC atrocities.
Things started changing in Natabari, a former Trinamool bastion, after BJP got a mssive lead from Natabari assembly constituency in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. BJP’s Nisith Pramanik wrested the Cooch Behar LS seat from TMC’s Paresh Adhikary by 54,000 votes. Since then, BJP has been consolidating its base in the district. Even a section of minorities in Muslim-dominated Suknabari voted for the party.