After reports of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) considering stripping off medals of the five top West Bengal police officials for participating in Mamata Banerjee’s sit in started doing the rounds, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has struck back at the Centre on Friday, 8 February, at a press conference in Kolkata.
Banerjee said that the Bengal government would award the highest state honours to the five officers if their medals were taken away.
This comes at a time when the West Bengal government is in the middle of a massive power struggle with the Centre.
On Sunday, 2 February, the Kolkata Police detained a team of the CBI that had reached the police commissioner’s residence to allegedly question and arrest him. Thereafter, the chief minister and her cabinet were on a dharna to “Save The Constitution” for three days.
The five officers named by the MHA are very senior officials, which include the Director General of West Bengal Police, Virendra Kumar.
Other officers include ADG (Security) Vineet Kumar Goyal, ADG (Law and Order) Anuj Sharma, Commissioner of Police (Bidhan Nagar) Gyanwant Singh and Additional Commissioner of Kolkata Police Supratim Sarkar. The Centre is mulling over stripping them off their awards for meritorious service and also stopping their promotions.
“I will give these five senior officials the highest state honour ‘Bangabibhusan’, if the Centre takes back their medals. Also, I will send a strongly-worded letter, if they send me one,” Mamata said on the sidelines of the Bengal Global Business Summit, CNN News18 reported.
Earlier, when the MHA had advised for discipinary action against police chief Rajeev Kumar for the same violation. Mamata had asserted that the police officers were at the dharna venue to offer protection to her, just like they would for any other dignitary. She had also claimed that this was an attempt by the Centre to harass the state government.
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