West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh. PTI/File photoKolkata: BJP's West Bengal unit president Dilip Ghosh, known for shooting off his mouth, has now asked party workers to threaten and thrash police personnel if they decline to lodge complaints against workers of the state's ruling Trinamool Congress.
He alleged that Trinamool workers beat up policemen regularly and reasoned that whoever hit cops came to power in the state.
"If they (Trinamool workers) are beating up cops day and night and abusing them, then what is wrong if we also beat them up? This is within the ambit of our democratic rights. In Bengal, whoever beats up police comes to power," Ghosh remarked at a party workers' meet in Howrah on Monday evening.
A clip of his speech doing the rounds on social media shows Ghosh claiming that Trinamool workers beat up the Bharatiya Janata Party's workers.
"Where there are meetings, they are beating up our workers...bruising their heads...and they are also registering cases against us. We will not have both: get beatings and get framed also... That's not the way. Either we hit them and they register cases against us or we get beaten up and frame cases against them. I am telling you all... when our friends from Trinamool come...first you have to initiate beatings... Let them lodge the cases," Ghosh said.
"Let there be reversal... It has been one-sided for long. And if they thrash us, then you lodge the cases against them. If police refuse to lodge cases, then threaten them, gherao the police station and thrash them," he said.
Ghosh, known for his inflammatory remarks, cautioned the police from resorting to favoritism.
"There should be a limit to favoritism. The uniform they don is from the taxpayer's money. The salary that they get is also from the common man's tax. They are thinking that Didimoni (West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee) is providing them (salary) from her zamindari. Don't commit this mistake. The government can change in a day," he said, referring to the regime change in Bihar.
In December, Ghosh had said Banerjee, also the Trinamool Congress supremo, "has lost her mind" after the demonetization of high-value currency notes. He threatened that the central government could have held her by the hair and thrown her out when she led a demonstration in Delhi.
In April this year, Ghosh triggered a fresh controversy by describing the Ram Navmi celebrations in the state as a fight between "Ramzada" (one born of Lord Ram) and "Haramzada" (illegitimate child).
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