TMC has maintained their stance that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was not invited to the centenary celebrations at Visva-Bharati University.

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday addressed the Visva-Bharati centenary celebrations through video conferencing, TMC had alleged that Mamata Banerjee did not get a call to attend the event.

Advertisement

Refuting the claim, BJP’s IT-Cell chief Amit Malviya tweeted a purported photo of the invitation letter that the Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor had sent to the Bengal CM.

Malviya said, “Visva Bharati had sent invite to WB CM on 4Dec2020. But for Pishi, politics is more important than the legacy of Gurudev Tagore! Never ever has a CM insulted Tagore’s Viswa Bharati like this!”

“Pishi is impersonation of narrow mindedness that is pushing Bengal to utter darkness!”

Visva Bharati had sent invite to WB CM on 4Dec2020.

But for Pishi, politics is more important than the legacy of Gurudev Tagore! Never ever has a CM insulted Tagore’s Viswa Bharati like this!

Pishi is impersonation of narrow mindedness that is pushing Bengal to utter darkness! pic.twitter.com/Lf5CLyTaPT

— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) December 24, 2020

However, the West Bengal’s governning party has hit back at Malviya’s claim and asked if he had any record of the invitation letter’s receipent.

Addressing the press at Trinamool Bhawan in Kolkata on Thursday, party leader Bratya Basu said, “Did anyone ever receive the letter? Do they have any record of who was the receipent of that letter? Did the VC signed the letter and kept it to himself?”

On being countered by a few journalists that Banerjee was actually invited by the Visva-Bharati officials over phone on Wednesday night, Basu said that the Chief Minister of a state could not be invited in such an informal manner.

Meanwhile, the West Bengal minister was also seen pointing out “pronunciation and factual errors” in PM Modi’s speech at the 100-year-old institution started by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal’s Birbhum district.

Basu further attacked PM over his comments on Visva-Bharati symbolizing nationalism. “The PM spoke of nationalism, Tagore said nationalism was the most divisive thing. Using religion to divide was not what Tagore advocated. His novel ‘Gora’ was about religion and what it eventually means to man. His novel ‘Ghare Baire’s’ message was that nationalism is an addiction that divides,” he said.