Mamata playing with national security: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has accused the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government of playing with national security, a day after India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed the chargesheet in the Burdwan bomb blasts case.

New Delhi Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 31 March 2015, 05:09 PM
Updated : 31 March 2015, 05:09 PM

Using the NIA chargesheet as a latest weapon to attack West Bengal’s ruling party, the BJP National Secretary Siddharth Nath Singh demanded to know from the Trinamool Congress “what happened to the 2012 Metiabruz bomb explosion report?”
 
The ruling party had ordered a state-level investigation into the Metiabruz bomb blast but the findings were not made public.
 
Charging the Mamata government with as many as 10 issues following NIA chargesheet, Singh hinted that she “traded national security for vote-bank politics”.
 
The NIA has charged 21 people, including four Bangladeshi nationals, with involvement in a Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Bangladesh (JMB) plot.
 
The chargesheet says, the JMB, a proscribed terrorist organisation in Bangladesh, was conspiring to overthrow the ruling Awami League government in Bangladesh through acts of terrorism and “replace it with a hard-line Sharia based Islamic rule”.
 
Thirteen of the 21 people named in the chargesheet have been arrested, while eight are still absconding.
 
Amongst them, three Bangladeshi are still at large.
 
The NIA chargesheet says that the terrorists were using the Indian soil to disturb a foreign country (Bangladesh).
 
It adds that the terrorists established organisational bases in West Bengal’s Nadia, Burdwan, Murshidabad, and Birbhum districts, and giving training in the use of firearms, making explosives, and running a radicalisation programme.
 
“Mamata-ji had accused the BJP of communalising the issue through the NIA but the BJP took it as a matter of national security…
 
“Now, we ask the Mamata government why did you allow your Burdwan superintendent of police to destroy evidence?” the BJP national secretary said.
 
The NIA chargesheet is now likely to land the Mamata Banerjee government in another uncomfortable situation at a time when one of her party MPs is accused of being in hand-in-glove with Muslim fundamentalists.
 
Political observers believe the developments could push Banerjee into a corner ahead of the 2016 Assembly election.