BJP workers and leaders clashed with the police during their march to the city civic headquarters - Kolkata Municipal Corporation - on Monday to protest the fake vaccine racket being run in the city.
After the State government relaxed Covid restrictions allowing offices to open and public transport to operate at reduced capacities, the clash brought city life to a standstill in the central business district, which houses most of the prominent offices, this afternoon.
The party workers with leaders like Ahad conducted rallies from the BJP State headquarters - as announced earlier - despite the police denying them permission for the programme.
Several senior BJP leaders and workers were detained by the police during their march towards the KMC office; as workers and leaders tried to break barricades set up by the police on the way to the civic body headquarters.
Fake Vaccination Racket
Earlier in June, the police had arrested one Debanjan Deb who impersonated an IAS officer, claiming to be associated with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, and was running a fake Covid-vaccination racket. He was found administering another drug, reportedly amikacin, in place of Covishield. At least 600 people, including a Trinamool Congress MP, Mimi Chakraborty, had been reportedly administered the fake Covid vaccine.
The city civic body had claimed ignorance and said “it was not aware of Deb’s antics”. Top brass of the civic body including the Chairman of the Board of Administrators, Firhad Hakim, had denied any association with Deb.
Political War
State BJP chief Dilip Ghosh claimed that the Trinamool Congress government was trying to “hush up” the alleged connection between the prime accused and suspected mastermind of the fake vaccination racket and some of the ruling party leaders and city civic body top brass bosses.
Deb, had been pictured with several senior Trinamool leaders including the then city mayor (from Trinamool), Firhad Hakim. He even took part in several of the State government’s flagship ‘Duare Sarkar’ (Governance at your doorstep) programmes.
“When the Trinamool Congress was in the opposition, they used to conduct programmes without any permission. And now if we want to hold any political event, we are prevented from doing so. We were taking out a peaceful protest rally, which was brutally attacked by the police,” he alleged.
Meanwhile, in another unrelated incident, videos of a Trinamool Congress leader administering Covid-19 vaccine to a woman at a camp in West Bengal’s Paschim Bardhaman district have surfaced stirring up a fresh controversy. Tabassum Ara, the former deputy mayor of the Asansol Municipal Corporation and the accused, denied administering the vaccine. She claimed, she was helping raise awareness about vaccination.