New Delhi: The painting of a dam in Jharkhand has led to heated exchanges between leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Trinamool Congress (TMC). The dispute was sparked by workers from the West Bengal government attempting to paint the walls of the Massanjore dam blue and white, the colours popularly associated with the TMC, according to an Indian Express report.
BJP’s Dumka unit chief Nivas Mandal raised objections and led members of the BJP youth-wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha to stall the painting on Thursday. According to BJP, the TMC is employing petty means to foist their politics on Jharkhand.
Louis Marandi, from Dumka and Jharkhand’s minister for minority welfare and woman and child development, threatened to “gouge out eyes” of anyone who dared to look at the barrage. “If someone dares to look at the Massanjore dam, we will gouge out his eyes. (Agar koi ankh uthake dekhega, hum uska ankh nikal lenge),” said the minister, adding that she would not “tolerate any misdoing” on the part of the Bengal government.
TMC leaders however have argued that the 1950s dam, located in the Dumka district of Jharkhand, is maintained by the West Bengal government. Citing this, the leaders have stressed they were well within their rights to paint the structure. And that the painting was not part of their political strategy.
West Bengal’s Birbhum district Trinamool president Anubrata Mondal stated, “As West Bengal government maintains this barrage, the officials have put blue-and-white coats here too. There is nothing abnormal. If there is anything which is abnormal, it is the political view of the BJP.” He added that it seemed “not only West Bengal BJP leaders, but also those from Jharkhand have begun fearing Mamata Banerjee. They (BJP) should know that blue-and-white is not TMC colour”.
This war of words has brought to the fore the history of the dam. Marandi has demanded that the “agreement on the dam, signed between the governments of West Bengal and undivided Bihar, should be made public.” The dam itself, across Mayurakshi river, has a storage capacity of 500,000 acre-feet, and is maintained by the West Bengal government. Farmers of Birbhum, Burdwan and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal are dependent on its water.
“This dam is in Jharkhand. When the dam was constructed, people of 144 villages in Dumka were displaced,” Marandi argued. She also confirmed that chief minister Raghubar Das had been made aware of the situation. Jharkhand state spokesman for the BJP Pratul Shahdev added, “…Jharkhand gets nothing out of it. We have always demanded that the agreement be re-negotiated. As it is, a dam is a national property and does not belong to any one state or political party. So, to impose one’s own colour scheme for a structure that is not in their state amounts to petty politics.”
The Trinamool Congress has filed an FIR, stating that they shall take all legal steps possible to respond to this situation.
After the TMC came to power in Bengal by dislodging the 34-year-old Left Front government, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had ordered Kolkata’s municipal corporation to paint the structures in white and sky blue – her favourite colours. In fact, Sovan Chatterjee the mayor-in-council of the TMC-run Kolkata Municipal Corporation passed a property tax waiver scheme for 2014-2015 for anybody who “wishes to paint his/her house or apartment building in white and sky blue, the theme colour for Kolkata.”