KOLKATA (The Thursday Times) — Civic workers brought a bulldozer to the Kolkata home of Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee on Thursday and tore down a temporary bamboo shed over the footpath, in the latest flashpoint between West Bengal’s new BJP government and the party it replaced.
A large contingent of Kolkata Police and central forces stood guard outside the house on Kalighat Road as municipal workers pulled down the shed and cleared the pavement. An iron gate outside the boundary wall, which the authorities said was encroaching on the footpath, was cut away with a gas cutter.
Banerjee, the Trinamool’s national general secretary and its most powerful figure after his aunt, former chief minister Mamata Banerjee, said no bulldozer could “silence my voice or break my resolve”. In a post on X, he vowed to keep fighting what he called the “Bangla Birodhis”, or enemies of Bengal, and said he would not retreat “until my last breath”.
Two versions of a shed
The state’s panchayat and rural development minister, Dilip Ghosh, defended the demolition, saying residents had faced hardship because of the structure. “He used to consider himself as being above the law,” Ghosh told reporters.
The Trinamool tells a different story. Its spokesperson, Arka Nag, said the shed had been put up by the state’s own security directorate to house police officers guarding Banerjee when he had Z-plus protection, and was no longer needed after that cover was withdrawn. Banerjee’s office staff had already begun taking it down on Wednesday, the party said, before civic workers arrived on Thursday morning to finish the job.
Some local residents had complained that the shed narrowed a congested stretch of road and forced pedestrians into traffic.
A week of tension
The demolition followed days of friction. On Wednesday, Banerjee accused the police of watching his house from parked vehicles and posted a video he said showed the surveillance. Tensions had first flared on November 6, when crowds gathered under the same shed to celebrate his birthday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party took power in West Bengal after this year’s state election, ending the Trinamool’s long rule and leaving it in opposition. The bulldozer has become a political symbol in India since BJP governments in states such as Uttar Pradesh began using demolitions against properties they say are illegal, a practice critics say is used to punish opponents. On the same day, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath described the bulldozer as a “brand” of his state.
