domain-b: It is becoming increasingly clear that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has a very
thin skin – or an empress-sized ego without the concomitant statesmanship, depending on one's point of view. Despite the outraged uproar caused by the controversial 'cartoon case', Banerjee has apparently asked the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to demand from Facebook the removal of four portrayals of her which she finds offensive. The CID on Monday wrote to the social networking site asking it to remove four the portraits lampooning Banerjee. It has also sought the IP address of the computer from which the pictures were first uploaded onto Facebook. Last week, Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was arrested, allegedly roughed up, and jailed overnight in a case where he should have got immediate bail (See: Twitterati slams Mamata for arrest over cartoons). This sparked a wave of lampoons and internet protests, under titles like arrestme.com. All political parties except Banerjee's Trinamool Congress reacted with outrage, calling Banerjee a ''fascist'' and so forth. There were widespread public protests even in her own state against her intolerance to criticism. Mahapatra's neighbour Subrata Sengupta was arrested along with Mahapatra for the same 'crime'. Both have been released; but on bail. Apart from other things, they were charged under the Indian Penal Code for 'eve-teasing', defamation, and humiliating a woman. The Mahapatra cartoon showed Banerjee and new railway minister Mukul Roy planning how to get rid of party MP and Roy's predecessor Dinesh Trivedi, who was sacked from his job by Banerjee for daring to increase passenger fares across the board, in the current Railway Budget. The cartoon in itself was not particularly amusing; but Banerjee's reaction certainly is in a tragi-comic sense. She was conspicuously absent at the meeting between the centre and states, particularly those ruled by non-Congress parties, on Monday to discuss the proposal for a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC). Several states are opposing the NCTC on the ground that it infringes on their autonomy in matters of law enforcement. Banerjee, despite her Trinamool Congress being part of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, has been the most vociferous critic of the move. While other opposing chief ministers like Orissa's Naveen Patnaik, Bihar's Nitish Kumar and Tamil Nadu's J Jayalalithaa attended the New Delhi conference, Banerjee chose to send state finance minister Amit Mitra to the conference. He used the opportunity to read out his boss's speech demanding stronger measures by the centre to curb cybercrime, which she said is on the increase. "A dedicated cell [to control cybercrime] is functioning [in Bengal] under the control of Director General of Police, CID. A cyber police station has been set up in Kolkata and a cyber-lab has also been set up,'' Banerjee said through Mitra. Underlining her separation from reality, Banerjee told reporters at Writers' Building in Kolkata that the performance of her government in Bengal ''is 100 out of 100''; while accusing the media of ''distorting'' the image of her government. ''You people see only negative ... you can't see anything positive or else you would have noticed the government's performance,'' she said. "There is a limit to everything. The media has its right to freedom. But that does not mean you can impose your views on others just because you have a pen in your hand." Days before the cartoon controversy popped up, Banerjee had barred all major English newspapers as well as several prominent Indian-language papers from state libraries on the ground (not literally stated of course) that they were critical of her. She has also come under fire over the recent arrest of molecular biologist Partho Sarathi Ray for his alleged role in protests against an the eviction drive at a hutment colony in Kolkata. Scientists from India and abroad along with prominent social activists have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking his intervention to get Ray freed. The state CID took over the Facebook case on 12 April following a police complaint filed by a resident of Kolkata saying he found the pictures depicting Banerjee offensive. A CID officer reportedly said that writing to Facebook was routine as there were frequent complaints against its content. But asking for an IP address to track the origin of an upload is a first. The Trinamool Congress supremo was also recently criticized for transferring a top cop who backed a rape victim. Kolkata's Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Damayanti Sen, who reportedly incurred Banerjee's wrath for backing the Park Street rape victim, was transferred from her position to a 'punishment posting' on 4 April. Sen is now Deputy Inspector General (Training) of a police school in Barrackpore. The 'controversial' cartoon is a caricature of filmmaker Satyajit Ray's thriller Sonar Kella. It has been doing rounds on the internet after the Trinamool Congress supremo forced Trivedi to resign from his post over his Rail Budget.Mahapatra uploaded the cartoon on his Facebook account, besides sending it to 65 people via e-mail, reports said. Source: domain-b.com
thin skin – or an empress-sized ego without the concomitant statesmanship, depending on one's point of view. Despite the outraged uproar caused by the controversial 'cartoon case', Banerjee has apparently asked the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to demand from Facebook the removal of four portrayals of her which she finds offensive. The CID on Monday wrote to the social networking site asking it to remove four the portraits lampooning Banerjee. It has also sought the IP address of the computer from which the pictures were first uploaded onto Facebook. Last week, Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was arrested, allegedly roughed up, and jailed overnight in a case where he should have got immediate bail (See: Twitterati slams Mamata for arrest over cartoons). This sparked a wave of lampoons and internet protests, under titles like arrestme.com. All political parties except Banerjee's Trinamool Congress reacted with outrage, calling Banerjee a ''fascist'' and so forth. There were widespread public protests even in her own state against her intolerance to criticism. Mahapatra's neighbour Subrata Sengupta was arrested along with Mahapatra for the same 'crime'. Both have been released; but on bail. Apart from other things, they were charged under the Indian Penal Code for 'eve-teasing', defamation, and humiliating a woman. The Mahapatra cartoon showed Banerjee and new railway minister Mukul Roy planning how to get rid of party MP and Roy's predecessor Dinesh Trivedi, who was sacked from his job by Banerjee for daring to increase passenger fares across the board, in the current Railway Budget. The cartoon in itself was not particularly amusing; but Banerjee's reaction certainly is in a tragi-comic sense. She was conspicuously absent at the meeting between the centre and states, particularly those ruled by non-Congress parties, on Monday to discuss the proposal for a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC). Several states are opposing the NCTC on the ground that it infringes on their autonomy in matters of law enforcement. Banerjee, despite her Trinamool Congress being part of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, has been the most vociferous critic of the move. While other opposing chief ministers like Orissa's Naveen Patnaik, Bihar's Nitish Kumar and Tamil Nadu's J Jayalalithaa attended the New Delhi conference, Banerjee chose to send state finance minister Amit Mitra to the conference. He used the opportunity to read out his boss's speech demanding stronger measures by the centre to curb cybercrime, which she said is on the increase. "A dedicated cell [to control cybercrime] is functioning [in Bengal] under the control of Director General of Police, CID. A cyber police station has been set up in Kolkata and a cyber-lab has also been set up,'' Banerjee said through Mitra. Underlining her separation from reality, Banerjee told reporters at Writers' Building in Kolkata that the performance of her government in Bengal ''is 100 out of 100''; while accusing the media of ''distorting'' the image of her government. ''You people see only negative ... you can't see anything positive or else you would have noticed the government's performance,'' she said. "There is a limit to everything. The media has its right to freedom. But that does not mean you can impose your views on others just because you have a pen in your hand." Days before the cartoon controversy popped up, Banerjee had barred all major English newspapers as well as several prominent Indian-language papers from state libraries on the ground (not literally stated of course) that they were critical of her. She has also come under fire over the recent arrest of molecular biologist Partho Sarathi Ray for his alleged role in protests against an the eviction drive at a hutment colony in Kolkata. Scientists from India and abroad along with prominent social activists have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking his intervention to get Ray freed. The state CID took over the Facebook case on 12 April following a police complaint filed by a resident of Kolkata saying he found the pictures depicting Banerjee offensive. A CID officer reportedly said that writing to Facebook was routine as there were frequent complaints against its content. But asking for an IP address to track the origin of an upload is a first. The Trinamool Congress supremo was also recently criticized for transferring a top cop who backed a rape victim. Kolkata's Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Damayanti Sen, who reportedly incurred Banerjee's wrath for backing the Park Street rape victim, was transferred from her position to a 'punishment posting' on 4 April. Sen is now Deputy Inspector General (Training) of a police school in Barrackpore. The 'controversial' cartoon is a caricature of filmmaker Satyajit Ray's thriller Sonar Kella. It has been doing rounds on the internet after the Trinamool Congress supremo forced Trivedi to resign from his post over his Rail Budget.Mahapatra uploaded the cartoon on his Facebook account, besides sending it to 65 people via e-mail, reports said. Source: domain-b.com
