Kolkata: A Left-leaning scholar group was prevented from screening the controversial BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Visva-Bharati University on Thursday night as Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited the campus to attend a cultural perform organised by the authorities. Singh, who will attend the Convocation of the central college on Friday, reached the campus on Thursday afternoon.
According to reviews, a gaggle of college students determined to display the controversial documentary after listening to the information of Rajnath Singh’s arrival ”to precise silent protest towards freedom of expression.”
A spokesperson of the Democratic Students Organisation (DSO), the scholar’s wing of the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist), mentioned each the college authorities and the police prevented them from screening “India: The Modi Question” on floor by not permitting a projector and a display contained in the campus.
“We had initially thought of screening the movie in January however later on determined to defer it. After coming to know that Rajnath Singh, who is a crucial member of the Narendra Modi cupboard, would attain Visva-Bharati on Thursday, we determined to display it within the night,” he mentioned.
A police official mentioned there was no details about any screening of the mentioned BBC documentary on the campus and the police took the required steps as per commonplace safety protocols owing to the presence of a VVIP just like the defence minister.
Earlier, Singh arrived in a helicopter at the campus and mentioned the college’s educational actions with Vice Chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty. He later watched a cultural programme carried out by college students of Visva-Bharati.
However, the transfer has been severely criticised by the BJP. BJP’s Birbhum district president Dhruba Saha mentioned {that a} member of a college students’ wing “with Maoist affiliation” had intentionally deliberate this screening at the time of the Defence Minister’s go to simply to insult him. “These fake leftists tried to create a similar ruckus within Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi over this documentary. However, the people of India do not trust them and they are totally isolated from the people,” he claimed.
The banned BBC documentary was earlier screened at the Presidency University and Jadavpur University by the Left college students’ wing, SFI, with none permission from varsity authorities.
The two-part documentary “India: The Modi Question” options the function of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was the chief minister of the state throughout the 2002 riots. The ruling authorities thrashed the documentary and termed it as a “propaganda piece” that lacks objectivity and displays a colonial mindset.
On January 21, the federal government had issued instructions to dam a number of YouTube movies and Twitter posts sharing hyperlinks to the documentary. Several opposition events slammed the federal government’s motion and mentioned they’d oppose any censorship.
The Supreme Court has dismissed a plea in search of the imposition of a whole ban on the BBC in India within the wake of the controversial documentary, terming the petition “entirely misconceived” and “absolutely meritless”.
