After Jai Shri Ram row, TMC and BJP engaged in 'capturing, losing and recapturing' each other's offices across West Bengal

North 24 Parganas: After the general elections, which was marked by violence in West Bengal, with the ruling TMC and BJP trading blame over the issue, both the parties are now allegedly “capturing” and “recapturing” each other’s offices in various districts of the state.

On 30 May, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited Naihati area of North 24 Parganas district and ‘recaptured’ an office, that had the BJP symbol and party name painted on it. The TMC supremo used a painter’s brush to paint in black colour the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) official party symbol (flowers and grass) over the saffron walls of the building.

The building on which Mamata painted her party’s symbol was allegedly captured by supporters of the newly elected BJP MP Arjun Singh who had won from Barrackpore after defeating Dinesh Trivedi.

During the same visit, Mamata also reprimanded people chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan near her convoy here and had said those who raised the slogans were “all outsiders and BJP people”.

“They are criminals and were abusing me. They are not from Bengal,” she had said. This prompted the BJP to announce that it will send 10 lakh postcards with “Jai Shri Ram” written on them to her.

Many TMC offices at block and village level in the state were reportedly painted in BJP’s colour (saffron) after the party made inroads into West Bengal by winning 18 of the 42 seats in the state cutting the TMC down to size by limiting its win to only 22 seats against the 34 it had won in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Reports also claimed that many properties belonging to TMC workers were being converted into BJP units after the owners of these places switched sides to join the BJP.

On May 28, two TMC MLAs, including Mukul Roy’s son Subhrangshu Roy, along with 63 municipal councillors joined the BJP in Delhi. Along with Subhrangshu and Tushar Kanti Bhattacharya, a CPI (M) MLA Hemtabad Devendra Roy also joined the BJP in the presence of West Bengal BJP in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya.

Meanwhile, Mamata, in a blog post on Sunday, attacked the BJP stating that some of its workers and supporters were using a section of the media to spread the ideology of hate. The chief minister also changed the profile picture of her official Twitter page and Facebook account.