West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee raised political temperature considerably when she accused the army of “clear violation of the Constitution” by attempting to “create a civil war-like situation in the country”. Mamata Didi has a penchant for dramatics and victimhood, sometimes justifiably so, during the three-decade rule of the Left Front in West Bengal. The Chief Minister decided to spend the night at the state secretariat. Perhaps she was readying herself to do a Boris Yeltsin in front of army tanks in the morning.What made it worse was other organs of the state like the West Bengal Police reduced themselves to parroting Ms. Banerjee’s hysterical social media postings. The air cleared after the army uploaded acknowledged copies of letters sent to senior police officers informing them about their exercise. Skeptics will want to know why the army didn’t approach the National Highways Authority for the information. In a digital world, this information, updated to the last second, could have been instantly emailed. For one, it is always beneficial to conduct a field exercise rather than framing strategies based on number crunching. Second, toll gates are a recent innovation. The army perhaps did not think it fit to adjust its procedures to the digitalisation of toll booths.But Mamata Banerjee has rarely lent herself to cogitative contemplation in public life. A day earlier she had alleged an attempt to kill her when her flight was kept on hold for landing due to congestion. The next day her colleagues were raising Cain in Parliament. Rational explanations from the airlines cut no ice with Mamata and her party colleagues. To be fair, Mamata is matching the ruling coalition at the Centre and even her new-found crusader, Arvind Kejriwal, in appealing to emotion while ignoring the facts. The Centre’s Love Jehad, surgical strikes and demonetisation are of the same piece. In this era of post-truth, perhaps we should reconcile ourselves to a kind of public posturing where truth is of secondary importance. But the downside of such affectations is their collateral damage on apolitical institutions like the army.

Don’t defame Army, says Bengal Guv; Didi hits back

Kolkata, December 3

West Bengal Governor KN Tripathi today cautioned against “defaming” and “letting down” the Army in the wake of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleging that soldiers extorted money from truck drivers during their deployment at toll plazas.Tripathi said: “Every person should take care in making allegation against a responsible organisation like the Army. Don’t let down the Army. Don’t defame the Army.” Responding to Tripathi’s caution, Mamata accused him of speaking in the “tone of central government” on the issue.“The Governor is speaking in the voice of the Central Government! He was not in the city for about eight days,” she tweeted.Terming the Governor’s comments as “unfortunate”, Mamata, also the Trinamool Congress supremo, said Tripathi should have checked 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 there for 36 hours protesting deployment of the Army at toll plazas in the state allegedly without informing her government—an issue that snowballed into a major row causing disruptions in Parliament. The Centre 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 the state governor and submitted a memorandum protesting against the deployment of Army at toll plazas.“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,” said State Education and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee after meeting the Governor.Echoing party supremo Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool leader criticised the Governor for his comments on the issue. — IANS