While the SFI heckling of Mamata Banerjee and her ministers gained the West Bengal Chief Minister public sympathy and turned the tide against the CPM, the Trinamool Congress’ (TMC) vandalising of the Presidency University in retaliation has once again put Didi on the backfoot.
On Thursday, doctors pronounced Banerjee’s condition as stable, but the state continued to boil — this time the backlash was aimed at the Trinamool’s dastardly act of ransacking the historic 100-year-old Baker Laboratory at the Presidency University on Wednesday.
Baker Lab has been home to some of India’s brightest minds, including Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, Satyendra Nath Bose, Meghnad Saha and P C Mohalanobis.
Students, faculty and alumni from the university organised a protest march from the campus to the state secretariat, Writers’ Building in Kolkata, on Thursday with even Vice Chancellor Malabika Sarkar joining in. “It is unthinkable. They can’t be students but a group of hooligans with TMC flags who attacked students, chased teachers and smashed panes. There was no assistance from the police,” said Sarkar.
The TMC claimed that the incident was orchestrated by the CPM, but video footage showed the presence of TMC councillor Partha Basu and leaders of the TMC’s student’s wing heading the rampage in which students were thrashed and property destroyed. Women students alleged that the TMC goons had threatened to rape them. Two persons have been arrested in connection with the vandalism.
The TMC chief, who vociferously criticised the SFI attack in the media as well as on a social networking site, has maintained a stoic silence on the Presidency incident. “I’m really shocked and astonished to see the incident which happened yesterday in front of the Planning Commission...Politics has become so dirty and nasty. I’ve spent 25 years in Delhi since my election as MP in 1984. What I saw yesterday is unprecedented... I have no words to express my condemnation of the incident,” said Banerjee on Facebook.