Kolkata: West Bengal Governor K.N. Tripathi on Saturday sternly cautioned against “defaming” the Indian Army in the wake of comments by Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee alleging that soldiers extorted money from truck drivers during their deployment at toll plazas.
Asked about Banerjee’s accusation that the soldiers extorted money from truck drivers, Tripathi said: “Every person should take care in making allegations against a responsible organisation like the Indian Army. Don’t let down the army. Don’t defame the army.”
Responding to Tripathi’s caution, Banerjee accused him of speaking in the “tone of central government” on the issue of the deployment of armed forces at toll plazas in the state.
“The governor is speaking in the voice of central government!! He was not in the city for about 8 days,” she tweeted.
Terming the governor’s comments as “unfortunate”, Banerjee said Tripathi should have checked the details of recent developments in the state before commenting.
“Before making statements, all details should have been checked. It is very unfortunate,” said Banerjee, who spent Thursday night at the state secretariat and stayed put for 36 hours protesting the deployment of the army at toll plazas in the state, a move allegedly done without informing her government that has now snowballed into a major row causing disruptions in parliament.
The central government and the army rubbished the allegations, saying too much was being read into a routine exercise.
Meanwhile, a Trinamool Congress delegation, on Saturday afternoon met Tripathi and submitted a memorandum protesting against the deployment of army at several toll plazas in the state.
“We have informed him in detail about how the army was deployed at 18 places in West Bengal without the permission of the state government,” State Education and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee said after meeting the governor.
Echoing Banerjee, the Trinamool official criticised the governor for his comments on the issue.
“It is unbecoming of a governor to make such a statement. People might assume that the governor is favouring a specific political party. we are not taking it in a good spirit,” he said.
The Trinamool official clarified that while the state government has the highest respect for Indian army, it strongly denounces the central government’s ploy of using the army in a wrong way.
“We have highest degree of respect for the Indian army but if central government tries to break the federal structure of a state by using army as a shield, we have to protest against that,” Chatterjee said.
In the Lok Sabha, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the army was conducting a routine exercise in Kolkata.
The Eastern Command showed papers detailing the correspondence between the army and the local police on the issue and said the state government and the police knew about it in advance.
