Kolkata rains: Political slugfest breaks out between BJP, TMC on social media over people's distress

Kolkata rains

As heavy overnight rainfall resulted in the death of at least ten individuals, including nine from electrocution, as Kolkata recorded its highest single-day rainfall since 1986, a political slugfest broke out on social media between the BJP, the state's prime Opposition, and its ruling dispensation, the Trinamool Congress. Public life was brought to its knees with large pats of the city thoroughly inundated.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wasted no time in attributing the casualties to "poor dredging" of the Farakka Barrage and lapses by the private power utility CESC.

While the BJP took to its social media handles to post pictures and videos of waterlogged streets of Kolkata and accused the TMC-run Kolkata Municipal Corporation of indulging in corruption, the ruling party slammed the BJP for "weaponising pain to spread hate".

"Durga Pujo celebrations are starting this week. Yet, due to Kolkata's extremely poor drainage system, Puja pandals are submerged under water. Years of anarchy under the CPI(M) and nearly 15 years of corruption in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation under TMC have forced Bengalis to suffer even during their biggest festival, Durga Puja," a post on the X handle of BJP's Bengal unit, referring to a video of the thoroughly waterlogged Maniktala area in north Kolkata, read.

In a sharp retort, state Finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya accused the BJP of playing politics with people's distress.

"Yesterday, Kolkata faced the fury of a rare cloudburst. Nearly 300 mm of rain fell within hours, a scale that overwhelms any city, no matter its infrastructure. Scientists have said the same in Mumbai 2005, Chennai 2015, Delhi 2023, no city escapes when the skies open without pause," Bhattacharya wrote on X.

"Yet what does BJP do? They ignore science, they ignore compassion, they ignore climate realities. Their only obsession is to weaponise pain and spread hate. They think people cannot tell the difference between a natural calamity and their propaganda," she added.

Women and Child Development Minister Sashi Panja claimed that officials of both the KMC and the state government were working relentlessly on the streets to ease the people's distress.

"Amid calamity, leadership is measured in compassion and action. BJP offers neither. Instead, they mock Bengal while their own governments fail their people year after year at the first sign of heavy rain. Empathy? That's beyond their vocabulary," she wrote on X. Panja accused the BJP of selective targeting of opposition governments.

In a strongly worded post on the same social media platform, state leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari squarely laid the blame for people's distress on the civic bodies concerned and the state power department.

"A procession of deaths in an inundated city!" Adhikari wrote.

"At an age when advanced technology provides accurate predictions of rainfall locations and its volume, citizens pay the price of incompetent and indifferent municipal bodies of Kolkata and Bidhannagar. They have not learnt lessons from the past, and the same picture gets repeated year after year," he added.

(With PTI inputs)