The tableau of West Bengal during 2019 Republic Day.  |  Photo Credit: IANS
Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention after the Centre rejected West Bengal’s Republic Day tableau on Subhas Chandra Bose.
Expressing shock over rejections of her state’s tableau featuring Netaji, the West Bengal chief minister said that she was hurt by the decision of the Government of India to abruptly exclude the proposed tableau of the Government of West Bengal from the ensuing Republic Day Parade.
“It is even more baffling for us that the tableau was rejected without assigning any reasons or justifications. The proposed tableau was commemorating the contributions of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his INA on his 125th birth anniversary year and was carrying portraits of some of the most illustrious sons and daughters of this country – Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, Sri Aurobindo, Matangini Hazra, Nazrul, Birsa Munda, and many patriots,” she wrote.
She further stated that the people of West Bengal are deeply pained by this attitude of the central government and asserted that Bengal was at the forefront of the Indian Freedom Struggle, and has paid the heaviest price for the country’s independence through Partition and uprooting of millions of people.
“It is shocking to find that this contribution of its valiant freedom fighters finds no place in the nation’s ceremony to celebrate the occasion of Republic Day on the 75th year of our Independence,” the letter read.