Yet again, for the umpteenth time, West Bengal woke up to the news of a blast taking the lives of five and the limbs of several others this morning. For any civilised society such news brings not just shock but grief & sorrow but here in West Bengal this is just another day with nothing much to write home about. In the last 12 years, petty anti-socials, hardened terrorists & criminal syndicates associated with the ruling party have been adept at manufacturing bombs with amazing alacrity.
#UPDATE | "5 bodies recovered", says Asis Ghosh, Fire Station Officer on the explosion that took place at the illegal crackers factory in Duttapukur. https://t.co/MZr7ZZa87H pic.twitter.com/FbzxBDnc3M
— ANI (@ANI) August 27, 2023
Illegal factories have surreptitiously sprouted across the length & breadth of the state whose stated purpose is to manufacture firecrackers but invariably end up manufacturing bombs that are used to silence any voice of sense & sanity. The huge & largely unemployed population of West Bengal is a steady source of labour at such factories where people are willing to risk their lives & limbs to get pitiable wages as there is no worthwhile alternative in West Bengal to make an honest living.
The explosion today at Duttapukur in suburban Kolkata is just the latest in a series of blasts that has been rocking West Bengal since 2011 when the present government led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took office. The ruling party understood this as the easiest method of clinging on to power by perfecting the culture of intimidation & terror into a fine art. The entire network of illegal bomb manufacturing factories from Digha to
Darjeeling run due to the patronage of the local leadership of the ruling party.
These explosives come in handy especially during the time of elections as an effective medium to intimidate & terrorise opposition candidates & ordinary voters. There has been a series of high-profile explosions & blasts in places like Khagragarh in Purba Bardhaman district where an NIA investigation uncovered the involvement of Banned terror outfit Jamaat E Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) & their cohorts from the Indian Mujahideen.
Similarly, earlier this year a huge blast at Egra in Purba Medinipur district killed at least 12 people including kingpin Bhanu Bag who was a member of the ruling party. In the recently concluded Panchayat elections at least 50 people were killed mostly due to bomb blasts & explosions while readying their arsenals to hurl onto workers & voters of opposition parties.
India has come out of the deadly decade of the UPA rule where serial blasts regularly rocked major cities from Jaipur to Jaunpur. This has largely been due to the decisive way in which terror has been tackled & their modules have been eliminated by the Narendra Modi led BJP government at the centre. Unfortunately, the sole exception
happens to be West Bengal where the land of Rabindra Sangeet has been turned into a battleground of explosions & blasts.
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