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News Desk: TMC MP Dola Sen filed an official complaint against a video that was circulating on social media on India’s 73rd Republic Day.
In her letter addressed to the Commissioner of Police in Bidhannagar Supratim Sarkar, she alleged that the video excluded North Bengal from the map of West Bengal. She said that she believes it was a “deliberate distortion” to malign “our nation, our state West Bengal and the people of the country”.
The state of West Bengal appears around a minute and 45 seconds into the video.
As per her letter, she has forwarded the video clipping, attached supporting documents and asked the police to take necessary action. “Please look into the matter and take necessary action and serious steps against this mollified intention of spreading this specially on Republic Day,” she wrote.
Local reports are drawing attention to the fact that a couple of BJP MPs had, last year, raised the demand for a new union territory, comprising seven of North Bengal’s eight districts, to be formed on account of alleged under-development of this part of West Bengal.
In the meantime, Bengali nationalist group Bangla Pokkho has written a letter to Union home minister Amit Shah over a video shared by the Border Security Force on its official Twitter handle on January 25.
The video shows BSF jawans from different border states wishing everyone a happy Republic Day. Each video clipping of a jawan from a different state has the name of the state written below. For one video clipping, the state mentioned is ‘North Bengal’.
The Bengal section appears a minute and 30 seconds into the video.
In its letter, the organisation wrote, “BSF through this video is sending a terrible message against Bengal and Bengalis There is no mention of West Bengal in the whole video. Rather, an imaginary state called North Bengal is being mentioned.”
Further, the organisation said, “There are languages of different states of India [in the video] but why is there no Bengali language in the whole video?”
Bangla Pokkho has alleged that the BSF deliberately excluded the state of West Bengal and Bengali language from the video. “Does BSF want to divide Bengal? Does BSF not consider West Bengal as part of India?” the letter says.
The organisation has asked the Centre to punish those who are involved in “such anti-Bengali activities”.
However, no official complaint has so far been registered against the BSF video.
