Kolkata, Sep 12 (IANS) : West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Saturday launched a scathing attack against the previous Left Front and Trinamool Congress governments in West Bengal and accused both the regimes of having a step-motherly attitude towards the Hindu religious rituals.
“Of the past 49 years, 34 years have been ruled by Communists who called religion the opium of masses. And in the next 15 years, the Trinamool Congress made an all-out effort to convert West Bengal into a Greater Bangladesh. The Chief Minister (Suvendu Adhikari) alleged that there had been a continuous attack on the traditions and culture of the Sanatani Hindu people in the state,” the Chief Minister said at the inauguration of a Ganesh Puja at Kestopur in the northern outskirts of Kolkata.
Attacking the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Chief Minister Adhikari added that the party’s books stalls in front of the Puja Pandal every year during the four days of Durga Puja never displayed the books by Swami Vivekananda.
“In those book stalls, you could get foreign books by Karl Marx or by Lenin. But you could never get Indian books such as Hanuman Chalisa or Bhagwad Geeta. It was clearly written there that they did not believe in religion, and they considered religion as opium,” the Chief Minister said.
He targeted the previous Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government and said that during the 15 years of their tenure in West Bengal from 2011 to 2026, every attempt was made by the previous ruling dispensation to convert West Bengal into a Greater Bangladesh.
He specially attacked his predecessor Mamata Banerjee but without directly naming her.
“The former Chief Minister (Mamata Banerjee), whom I defeated twice in Nandigram and Bhabanipur, said in the Puja coordination meeting at Netaji Indoor Stadium that because of Muharram there would be no idol immersion on Vijaya Dashami in a particular year,” the Chief Minister noted.
In 2021, Suvendu Adhikari defeated Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram Assembly constituency in East Midnapore district by a margin of little less than 2,000 votes,
In 2026, Suvendu Adhikari defeated the previous Chief Minister from the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency in South Kolkata by a margin of little over 15,000 votes.
