Union Home Minister Amit Shah has asked the BJP Tripura and West Bengal units to hold press conferences relating to recent clashes and violence that erupted in Tripura on Monday itself. In Tripura the BJP press meet will be addressed by Union MoS Pratima Bhowmik and in West Bengal by Dilip Ghosh.
In an attempt to give the press conference wide coverage across the country as a counter to the TMC strategy the press conference, as per Shah’s instruction, in Agartala is likely to be held in Hindi instead of usual Bengali.
Sources said, a delegation of the Trinamool Congress MPs sought a meeting with Shah in New Delhi over the violence in Tripura as well as arrest of the party’s leader Sayoni Ghosh but the Union Home minister declined to meet them. Instead he took stock of the situation from his party colleagues in the state and then instructed them to hold the press conference. Since the violence related to TMC, he asked the West Bengal party unit too to hold a press meet simultaneously, sources added.
In the press conference the BJP is likely to seek to dispel the anti-BJP narrative that the TMC was trying to build across the country in the wake of clashes, violence and arrests that were taking place in the state. Besides, press conference in West Bengal the BJP is expected to come up with some sort of agitation programme against what the party calls ‘the TMC mischief in Tripura to sway the voters in the civic polls’.