Tag: Babul Supriyo

  • Infighting in Bengal BJP: Dilip Ghosh cautions party leaders against airing critical views

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: With several West Bengal BJP leaders airing critical views, state party chief Dilip Ghosh said on Monday that many of these opinions are against the saffron party’s interests, after he met its national president J P Nadda here.

    Ghosh told reporters that he apprised Nadda of the political situation in the state and also of the BJP’s affairs there.

    MP Saumitra Khan had spoken out after failing to find a place in the recent expansion of the Union Council of Ministers while Babul Supriyo, who was dropped in the exercise, had written on Facebook that he was asked to quit before deleting the statement.

    Rajib Banerjee, who had quit the ruling Trinamool Congress to join the BJP, has also been making critical statements after the saffron party lost in the assembly polls.

    Without naming the erring leaders, Ghosh said that such statements affect the morale of party workers.

    “I have apprised him of the different opinions that have been aired in public, how they spoke without thinking. This dampens the morale of the party workers and should be stopped. The statements which should have expressed internally have been expressed publicly,” said Ghosh.

    Speaking further on the leaders who have made out-of-line public statements, Ghosh said that disciplinary action could be taken against them if they continue to make such statements.

    The growing discord in the BJP’s Bengal unit came to the fore also when Khan stepped down from the post of the party’s state youth wing chief and took to Facebook to launch a blistering attack on Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, claiming that he tries to take credit for all achievements.

    Later, however, he withdrew his resignation.

    “This is against the interests of the party. The party has a disciplinary committee, they will decide. I understand that they must have said this from frustration or for some other reason. However, if there is no change, disciplinary action will be taken,” he said.

    On his role as the chief of the party unit in Bengal, Ghosh said that he will continue as long as the party wants him to.

    Asked about the induction of four first-times MPs from the state in the Union Council of Ministers, he said the BJP grooms new people by giving them more responsibility.

    “It is good for the party in Bengal that we have representatives in the cabinet. I am very happy,” he said.

    Ghosh also took a dig at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose party TMC has said that it will unite the opposition parties on the petrol price issue in Parliament and project the CM as a national leader.

    “She has tried to be a national leader for many years. Who has heard her? Let her concentrate on Bengal and try and work towards the welfare of the people in the state,” said Ghosh.

  • Union minister Babul Supriyo tests positive for COVID for the second time

    By PTI
    Union Minister Babul Supriyo Sunday informed that he and his wife have tested positive for COVID and hence he wont be able to vote in Asansol on April 26.

    Supriyo has tested positive for the virus for the second time.

    He, however, said mentally he will be with the BJP candidates of the Asansol area and will monitor the situation from home.

    “Both me & my wife have tested positive. Me for the 2nd time!! V Sad that I won’t be able to vote in Asansol. I needed to be there on the road too for the 26th polls where ‘desperate’ @AITCofficial goons hv already unleashed their terror machinery to disrupt free & fair polls,” Supriyo tweeted.

    “However, the #TMchhi terror machinery who I hv handled (well) since 2014 may not rejoiceWil b doing my duties frm my room & b right by my candidates mentally in everyway possible to ensure 9/9 seats there,” he said in a series of tweets.

    Both me & my wife have tested positive Me for the 2nd time!!V Sad that I won’t be able to vote in Asansol. I needed to be there on the road too for the 26th Polls where ‘desperate’ @AITCofficial Goons hv already unleashed their terror machinery to disrupt free & fair polls 1/2
    — Babul Supriyo (@SuPriyoBabul) April 25, 2021

    Supriyo, a two-time MP from Asansol, is contesting assembly election from Tollygunge assembly seat where voting is over. The seventh phase of elections in 36 assembly segments in West Bengal will be held on April 26.

  • Tollygunge: Babul Supriyo takes on Trinamool heavyweight Aroop Biswas in the battle for Bengal’s tinsel town

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: The high profile Tollygunge seat, considered a hub of the Bengali film industry, is all set for a clash of titans as Union minister Babul Supriyo is pitted against TMC heavyweight and PWD Minister Aroop Biswas with the cine industry’s development as their main poll plank.

    Apart from the development of the area which witnessed a spurt in the construction business in the past 20 years or so, it is the film industry that drives the politics in the seat.

    A firm control over the film industry is a must to win the seat.

    The CPI(M), which was the runner up in the 2016 polls, has fielded a fresh face – actor Debdut Ghosh – in the constituency which has several film studios and will go to polls in the fourth phase on April 10.

    With the TMC and the BJP locked in a bitter battle for Bengal, the film industry has now been polarised on political lines.

    But control over the industry is incomplete without a victory in the seat, situated in posh South Kolkata and home to mixed demography of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, upper-middle- class, refugees and Hindi speaking people.

    The BJP has fielded two-time MP and Union minister Babul Supriyo, also a renowned singer, to wrest the seat from the three-time TMC MLA Aroop Biswas who has a long association with the film industry.

    Supriyo, the BJP MP of Asansol in Paschim Bardhaman district, is confident of unsettling the clout of Biswas.

    “A syndicate raj has been established in the film industry by the TMC and Biswas brothers (Aroop and Swarup). For the development of the Bengali film industry, this syndicate raj has to end. The BJP will take it forward to new heights,” Supriyo said.

    The union minister alleged that the studio para — the neighbourhood of New Theatres studio, Technicians Studio and the NT1 studio — has witnessed “unprecedented coercion” by the two brothers who forced technicians and artists to either follow their diktats or go without a job in these 10 years.

    “We will end this dictatorship. A large section of artists and technicians have already publicly pledged their support (to us). Others will come out after May 2 (when results will be out),” he said.

    The BJP leader also said that the “syndicate raj and cut money culture prevalent in the construction sector” in Tollygunge must stop.

    In West Bengal, ‘syndicate’ means the business run by persons allegedly enjoying political patronage, who force promoters and contractors to buy construction materials, often of inferior quality, at high prices.

    CPI(M) candidate Debdut Ghosh said that although the TMC has established a “reign of terror in the industry”, but choosing the BJP would be a “harakiri” as the parties are two sides of the same coin.

    Aroop Biswas, however, said that the TMC has worked for the industry’s development and has taken it to new heights in the last 10 years.

    “The BJP and Bengali culture are anti-thesis of each other. Both can never go together. Those joining the BJP will soon realise this and regret their decision,” the three-time MLA said.

    Rubbishing Supriyo’s allegations, Biswas said, “The government only comes in when there is a crisis in the film industry, and various bodies seek its intervention.”

    He claimed that unlike the CPIM regime, there had been no interference in businesses and entrepreneurial activities in the past 10 years.

    However, The TMC’s influence over the Tollygunge-based film industry, known by its portmanteau Tollywood, since even before Mamata Banerjee’s ascendance to power in 2011, seems to have been waning with several celebrities shifting their allegiance to the saffron party.

    Ironically, the BJP, which seeks to unseat the TMC from power, has taken a leaf out of Banerjee’s strategy of soliciting the tinsel town’s support towards its causes and fielding actors in elections.

    The BJP, which attempts to shed the “outsider” tag and make a place in the Bengali psyche, has left no stone unturned to attract big names of the film industry into the fold.

    The TMC, which has an affinity for celebrities and has several actors as its MLAs and MPs, too fielded a considerable number of cine stars in the elections.

    A huge rally of technicians were taken out in Tollygunge to protest against the alleged attempt by saffron forces to sow seeds of discord in the entertainment industry, said Swarup Biswas, the president of an association of technicians.

    However, Sanghamitra Choudhury, BJP leader and office-bearer of another union of artists and technicians, said, “The intimidation and threat of Biswas brothers won’t continue. Supriyo’s election will be a game-changer.”

    The segment also witnessed a high voltage campaign as yesteryear actress and Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan held a colourful roadshow canvassing for Aroop Biswas, while BJP national president J P Nadda took part in a roadshow in favour of Supriyo.

    The assembly segment has been a bastion of the CPI(M) since the early 1960s.

    However, in 1996, the Congress won the seat.

    Since 2001, it has been a stronghold of the TMC, and Aroop Biswas has been its representative since 2006.

    The constituency has a huge refugee population in areas like Bijoygarh, Ranikuthi and Netajinagar, where people from erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had settled in the 50s and 60s.

    They are also a key to victory in this assembly segment, which has 2,69,358 voters.

    Although Biswas is known for his availability 24*7, there are allegations that TMC councillors of the constituency are not found at the hour of need.

    Dipankar Ghosh, a voter in the Regent Park area of the constituency, said, “People are aggrieved due to the shoddy and preferential rescue and rehabilitation work during the Cyclone Amphan (in May 2020) when people in many localities had to spend 5-6 days without electricity.”

    Sabyasachi Basu, another resident, said although there has been considerable development in civic issues, the TMC representatives are not seen regularly in their localities.

  • Union Minister Babul Supriyo creates controversy after ‘slapping’ man in BJP office

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Union Minister Babul Supriyo who is contesting the West Bengal assembly election from the Tollygunje constituency, has courted controversy by allegedly slapping a man inside a party office in Kolkata.

    A video, which went viral Monday, showed the singer-turned BJP leader purportedly slapping the man who had repeatedly asked him to start serious campaigning on the field instead of posing before TV cameras and giving bytes.

    Supriyo later claimed that he did not “slap him but only gestured to do so”.

    The alleged incident took place in a BJP party office at Ranikuthi in the Tollygunge constituency where the Union minister of state for environment, forest & climate change attended a function on the occasion of Doljatra festival on Sunday.

    When the man advised him to start serious campaigning, Supriyo initially asked him to keep quiet but he continued to make similar comments, BJP sources said.

    At one point of time, the minister was seen slapping him once.

    “With people coming from one party to another, there can be some Bibhisons and some Mir Jafars (traitors). Some people are definitely trying to create disturbances. I kept my cool despite his provocations,” Supriyo told reporters.

    However, he did not elaborate if he considered the youth as someone sent by the Trinamool Congress or a ‘Bibhison’ or ‘Mir Jafar’ within the party.

    The identity of the youth is not known.

    TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said that the party wanted to know whether the man slapped by Supriyo was “an outsider of the Trinamool Congress or a Bibhison (someone of the BJP)”.

    “Those accepting people from other parties with open arms should not make such comments,” he said.

    BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said, “Babul might have touched the man at the heat of the moment but he did not intend to hit him or harm him physically.”

  • MPs, defectors and actors among candidates: BJP deploys heavy artillery in south Bengal

    Express News Service
    KOLKATA:  The BJP is deploying heavy artillery to wrest south Bengal from the Trinamool Congress, if one were to go by the list of candidates for 63 seats in the third and fourth phases of the eight-phase West Bengal Assembly polls.

    For, it has fielded four BJP members of Parliament, four defectors and an equal number of actors, trying to whip up enthusiasm and possibly create a wave for the big fight.

    The party has already made deep inroads in north Bengal during the Lok Sabha polls. While Union minister and Asansol MP Babul Supriyo will contest from Tollygunge in Kolkata, Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta will enter the fray from Tarakeshwar.

    Dasgupta’s name is already doing the rounds as a possible chief ministerial candidate.

    ALSO READ | ‘BJP will bring back Sonar Bangla’: Amit Shah tells voters ahead of WB Assembly elections

    Tarakeshwar is a popular Hindu pilgrimage site in Hooghly district and his candidature is significant in the backdrop of the BJP’s Hindutva rhetoric.

    Fielding Supriyo in Tollygunge is being seen as a smart move as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while announcing her party’s candidate list, had hinted she might contest from there besides Nandigram.

    Former minister in Mamata’s cabinet Rajib Banerjee has been fielded from his own constituency Domjur in Howrah and Trinamool defector Rabindranath Bhattacharya from Singur. Bhattacharya joined the BJP two days after Mamata denied him a ticket.

    But angry BJP supporters in Singur reportedly locked up visiting Madhya Pradesh health minister Prabhuram Chaudhary in a party office, demanding Bhattacharya’s axing from the list.

    Meanwhile, minutes after he was nominated as BJP candidate from Tarakeswar assembly seat in Hooghly district, Dasgupta said his party wants to put an end to TMCs ‘syndicate raj’ in West Bengal.

    He also asked people who hail from the state but live outside to “chip in” and help the BJP build ‘Sonar Bangla’ (golden Bengal).

    “We all are aware about the situation prevailing in state. This atmosphere of violence, extortion. We want to end that. The BJP will ensure that people in Bengal get to live in peace,” he said.

    Senior saffron party leaders including Amit Shah and J P Nadda have often hit out at the Mamata Banerjee camp for allegedly patronising syndicates and clubs that extort money from common people.

    Dasgupta also said that “work opportunities have dried up” in the state, and talented youth are moving out for jobs and higher education.

    ALSO READ | Denied poll ticket, BJP aspirants protest across Bengal; TMC turncoat Sovan Chatterjee quits

    “Bengalis have been able to establish themselves all over the world. Sadly, they do not get enough scope to work here and move out. We wish to stem that flow,” he said.

    Taking to Twitter, he wrote, “Honoured to be nominated by the West Bengal BJP to contest from Tarakeshwara centre of Bengals cultural heritage. I look forward to the campaign for a new, vibrant Sonar Bangla.”

    (With PTI Inputs)

  • Congress, Left have no relevance in Bengal, says BJP leader Babul Supriyo

    By ANI
    KOLKATA: As Congress-Left alliance gears up to fight the Assembly polls in West Bengal, Union Minister and BJP leader Babul Supriyo on Wednesday said these political parties have no relevance in the state.

    “It’s a democratic country and they are most welcome to do it but these are alliances of opportunism and we also know what the result would be. Congress doesn’t even have leadership. They have a leader whose lines very soon become memes or jokes. Left are left out. Congress and Left have no relevance in Bengal,” Babul Supriyo told ANI.

    In another crucial development, after bagging five seats in Bihar, Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) stretched its wings in Bengal with his announcement to contest the upcoming Assembly polls from West Bengal.

    ALSO READ: BJP deputes 22 leaders with organisational skills for 109 key assembly seats in West Bengal

    “All of them are welcome to fight the election. I also don’t know why Asaduddin Owaisi (President, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) wanting to expand his party in Bengal is being seen with some kind of cynicism. I do not know why it is being seen with suspicion. He did great in Bihar and he has every right to come and fight here in Bengal,” said Babul Supriyo.

    During his first visit to Bengal after the announcement to contest the West Bengal Assembly polls, Owaisi held a discussion at Futura Sharif in Bengal’s Hooghly district with Indian Secular Front’s Abbas Siddiqui.

    However, the Congress-Left alliance said the Indian Secular Force (ISF), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will be part of the Congress-Left alliance for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly polls.

    On Tuesday Adhir Ranjan Choudhury, President, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC) said, “We do not want to speak on the seat-sharing because while our discussions were on, a few political developments took place here in Bengal. Indian secular front (ISF), RJD, NCP and other such political parties have expressed their faith that there is a need for them to get incorporated into Left-Congress alliance.”

    With final seat-sharing yet to be announced the alliance in a press conference appraised, “There was an atmosphere that suggested that the election is a fight between BJP and TMC (Trinamool Congress). However, now the wind has changed its direction. People will say that the election will be between BJP, TMC and Congress-Left.”

    Full-fledged campaigning has started in West Bengal for Assembly elections that has as many as 294 seats. 

  • “Nonsense”: Babul Supriyo slams West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s ‘free COVID vaccine’ promise

    By ANI
    ASANSOL: Lashing out at Mamata Banerjee for her “free vaccine” claim, BJP’s Member of Parliament Babul Supriyo on Tuesday urged the West Bengal chief minister to refrain from such “nonsense.”

    Addressing mediapersons here on Tuesday, Supriyo further said that the Central government has already announced vaccines free of cost to people. “Prime Minister held video conferencing with Chief Ministers of all states. Of course, all state health workers will have to do the on ground inoculation. I request Mamata Banerjee to not say nonsense like providing free vaccine.”

    Banerjee had on January 10 announced that the state government is making arrangements to vaccinate all the people in the state against COVID-19 vaccine without any cost.

    Yesterday West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh had lambasted Mamata Banerjee and accused her of ‘publicising Centre’s schemes and vaccine under her own name’ in the poll-bound state. Ghosh said she wants to publicise the vaccine by renaming it as “Tikashree” or “Mamatashree” ahead of the elections.

    West Bengal is gearing up for the upcoming Assembly Election for 294 seats this year. The tenure of the current government in the state of West Bengal is coming to an end on May 30.