Kolkata rains: Political slugfest breaks out between BJP and TMC over people’s distress

Kolkata, Sep 23 (PTI) With large parts of Kolkata thoroughly inundated, public life brought to its knees and at least seven people electrocuted in the wake of widespread and torrential overnight downpour, a political slugfest broke out on social media between the BJP, the state's prime opposition, and its ruling dispensation, the Trinamool Congress.

While the saffron party took to its social media handles to post pictures and videos of waterlogged streets of Kolkata and accused the TMC-run Kolkata Municipal Corporation of indulging in corruption, the ruling party slammed the BJP for "weaponising pain to spread hate".

"Durga Pujo celebrations are starting this week. Yet, due to Kolkata's extremely poor drainage system, Puja pandals are submerged under water. Years of anarchy under the CPI(M) and nearly 15 years of corruption in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation under TMC have forced Bengalis to suffer even during their biggest festival, Durga Puja," a post on the X handle of BJP's Bengal unit, referring to a video of the thoroughly waterlogged Maniktala area in north Kolkata, read.

Another post of the BJP, with an attached video clip of an inundated Science City area in eastern parts of the city, equated the public distress to "lack of business" in the state.

"See the condition of Kolkata around Science City. This is one of the state's highly acclaimed and posh regions that houses a few organisations. If such is the condition of civil lives, how can anyone think about living a sustainable life in Kolkata? How can any organisation further have the intent to invest? This is a breakdown of civil order," the post read.

In a sharp retort, state Finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya accused the BJP of playing politics with people's distress.

"Yesterday, Kolkata faced the fury of a rare cloudburst. Nearly 300 mm of rain fell within hours, a scale that overwhelms any city, no matter its infrastructure. Scientists have said the same in Mumbai 2005, Chennai 2015, Delhi 2023, no city escapes when the skies open without pause," Bhattacharya wrote on X.

"Yet what does BJP do? They ignore science, they ignore compassion, they ignore climate realities. Their only obsession is to weaponise pain and spread hate. They think people cannot tell the difference between a natural calamity and their propaganda," she added.

But Bengal can, the minister said, "We know that yesterday was nature's wrath. We also know that BJP's attempt to inject hatred during Durga Puja is strategic and will fail miserably," she declared.

Women and Child Development minister Sashi Panja claimed that officials of both the KMC and the state government were working relentlessly on the streets to ease the people's distress.

"Amid calamity, leadership is measured in compassion and action. BJP offers neither. Instead, they mock Bengal while their own governments fail their people year after year at the first sign of heavy rain.

"Empathy? That’s beyond their vocabulary," she wrote on X.

Panja accused the BJP of selective targeting of opposition governments.

"When Gurgaon gets flooded, the BJP stays mum. And at a time of calamity, instead of showing compassion for people all BJP does is mock the Bengal government," she said.

In a strongly worded post on the same social media platform, state leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari squarely laid the blame for people's distress on the civic bodies concerned and the state power department.

"A procession of deaths in an inundated city!" Adhikari wrote.

"At an age when advanced technology provides accurate predictions of rainfall locations and its volume, citizens pay the price of incompetent and indifferent municipal bodies of Kolkata and Bidhannagar. They have not learnt lessons from the past and the same picture gets repeated year after year," he added.

Adhikari lashed out at the state Power department, blaming it for not just its "abject failure", but its "criminality" in not being able to tackle the live electrical wire menace in the city.

"Where are your officials? Why haven't effective steps been taken to handle dangers lurking from live wires? So far, seven innocent people are dead. This is not your failure, this is criminal negligence. People must be held responsible for this neglect and punished," he stated.

The BJP leader highlighted the repeated annual sufferings of the people and asked how long this distress, stemming from anarchy, would continue. PTI SMY RG