Mamata too intolerant of criticism

 

The latest one which has sparked outrage among the opposition parties, academic community and rights activists is the assault and arrest of a Jadavpur university professor Ambikesh Mahapatra for circulating cartoons that show Mamata and railway minister Mukul Roy discussing ways to get rid of party minister Dinesh Trivedi.

 

Mahapatra was arrested early Friday and charged with IPC offences relating to defamation and insulting the modesty of women as well as cyber crime offences.

 

Along with Mahapatra police also arrested Subrata Sengupta, the secretary of Mahapatra\\\’s housing society as the professor allegedly used the society\\\’s registered email id to send the cartoon.

 

They were granted bail by the Alipore court on Friday evening.

 

Prior to the arrest Mahapatra was mercilessly beaten by the Trinamool activists on Thursday night.

 

The academic community termed the incident as a clear assault on the minimum democratic right of freedom of expression.

 

 "Mamata shouldn\\\’t have been so touchy, if touchy people are declined to dictatorship it becomes difficult," said academician Sunanda Sanyal.

 

Condemning the police action, noted writer Sunil Gangopadhyay said that it was difficult for him to understand that how arrests could be made over cartoons which were made in good humour.

 

Noted writer Sunil Gangopadhyay said the arrests were a pointer to the dictatorial attitude of the ruling party "which is ominous".  

 

"It’s an extreme violation of freedom of expression!” tweeted exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen.

 

One of her own party leaders Kabir Suman expressed shock over the incident and said she has changed after becoming the chief minister.

 

Mamata Banerjee led West Bengal government has recently drawn a lot of negative publicity.

 

In another controversial move, the state government had instructed 2,500 public libraries on what newspapers they can stock and had banned all the English newspapers. 

 

Later, one English daily was added to the list following the massive protests.

 

Earlier, Mamata had ignited controversies by blaming opposition for conspiring to fabricate rape stories to malign her government.

 

 She even went on to blame the Left Front for the recent spate of deaths of infants in government-run hospitals in the state.