West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee paid homage to Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee on the latter’s 117th birth anniversary through a post on Twitter. In her tweet, the Trinamool Congress supremo addressed Mookerjee as a “former Union Minister”.
“Remembering former Union Minister Shyama Prasad Mookerjee on his birth anniversary,” she wrote on Twitter. Mookerjee had served as a Minister of Commerce and Industry in the Interim Central Government headed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru from 15 August 1947 to 6 April 1950 as an elected representative of the Hindu Mahasabha.
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Arup Roy, the Minister of Co-operation, paid tribute to Mookerjee by offering flowers before a statute of the Kolkata-born leader.
“Mookerjee’s birth anniversary is celebrated by our government every year,” Roy was quoted as saying by ANI.
“He was a good citizen of the nation and BJP wasn’t formed when Mookerjee was alive,” said Roy parrying obvious questions on how a TMC minister is honouring a politician whose party was the precursor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In March this year, a bust of Mookerjee was vandalised in Kolkata following the toppling of a Lenin statue in Tripura. Seven people, including a woman, were arrested by the police who said that the bust was blackened and its eyes and ears damaged, apparently with a hammer.
