PM Modi says TMC goondas broke Vidyasagar's statue, BJP govt will install grand statue
Mau (UP): Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday said his government was committed towards Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's vision and promised to install his grand statue at the same spot in Kolkata where it was vandalised by "TMC goondas".
While lashing out at Mamata Banerjee, the prime minister said he was going for a rally in Dum Dum later in the day but was not sure if the West Bengal Chief Minister will allow his helicopter to land.
Addressing an election rally here, Modi said,"The statue of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was broken by TMC goondas during the road show of BJP President Amit Shah. Those involved in this act should be given strong punishment".
He said a grand "panch dhatu" (made up of five metals) statue of Ishwar Chand Vidyasagar will be installed at the same spot to give a befitting reply to TMC workers.
Kolkata witnessed wide-spread violence during BJP president Shah's massive road show Tuesday. A bust of 19th century Bengali icon Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was vandalised during the violence.
Hitting back at BSP supremo Mayawati, who had attacked him over violence in West Bengal, Modi said, "The manner in which the West Bengal government has been targeting UPiites, Biharis and those from Purvanchal, he thought Behenji will give a befitting reply but she is more concerned about power".
The prime minister said he is going to Bengal later in the day and added that "anarchy was spread by TMC workers during his earlier meetings there in West Midnapore and Thakurnagar".
"I have a rally in Dum Dum. Let's see if Didi allows it, if she has her way she will not allow the helicopter to land, Modi said.
Lashing out at the SP-BSP alliance, he said those raising "Modi-hatao slogans are today frustrated.Uttar Pradesh has made their arithmetic all wrong and so their abuses have increased".
"Mahamilavatis want somehow to get 'khichdi' govt at Centre which can be blackmailed for their needs," he said.
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Kolkata (PTI): The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
