Jai Shri Ram row intensifies, Bengal intel told to 'sanitise' areas before Mamata Banerjee's visits

The Jai Shri Ram chants are going to stay in Bengal’s air with the BJP intensifying its strategy to use the slogan to target Mamata Banerjee whenever she tours any part of the state. Now, a report has come out that the West Bengal Chief Minister is so angry with the ongoing drama that it has been instructed to the intelligence officials to map out the danger zones and sanitise the area before her visits. Giving out the details about the unusual order, The Telegraph report said that, “state home department officials said the intelligence agencies had been instructed to identify the areas along the chief minister’s main and alternative routes where she could be accosted with “Jai Shri Ram” chants.”  

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Banerjee had tried to deflect the attention and said that she doesn’t have any problem with the chant but the way it is used. “The BJP is using religious slogan such as Jai Sri Ram as their party slogan in a misconceived manner by mixing religion with politics. We do not respect this forcible enforcement of political slogans on others in the name of so called RSS which Bengal never accepted. This is a deliberate attempt to sell hate ideology through vandalism and violence which we must oppose together,” Banerjee said in the Facebook blog.

On two occasions – May 5 and May 30 — Banerjee was seen yelling at the group of people who were chanting Jai Shri Ram in East Midnapore district and in North 24 Parganas.

Confronting the group, she said, “These are all outsiders and BJP people, they are criminals and were abusing me. They are not from Bengal.” Threatening her rivals, the Chief Minister even improvised an iconic Mithun Chakraborty dialogue from movie ‘MLA Fatakeshto’ and said, “I know all of them. I am challenging you all. Do you remember the dialogue of Mithun Chakraborty? 'marbo ekhane.. laash porbe... (Will thrash you here, corpse will fall) no I cannot talk about corpse, I will say 'marbo ekhane ... bichar hobe okhane ( I will thrash you here and you will get justice there).”