Ruckus and chaos were on full view in the West Bengal Assembly Thursday as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition party, shouted and screamed at each other over a resolution condemning 'atrocities' against Bengali migrants.
BJP lawmakers refused to allow Ms Banerjee to speak, demanding instead she explain why Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition, had been suspended for the rest of the session; he had been suspended Monday for disrupting a debate on the alleged harassment of Bengali migrants.
Speaker Biman Banerjee repeatedly asked the opposition lawmakers to stand down while the Chief Minister addressed the House, but his appeals fell flat and sloganeering by the BJP continued.
Eventually Chief Whip Shankar Ghosh was suspended, for the rest of the day.
Unruly scenes from the Assembly showed marshals pressed into service to remove Mr Ghosh out, causing further chaos after BJP MLAs tried to block them from doing their job.
Visuals from outside the Assembly showed Mr Ghosh receiving medical treatment.
VIDEO | Kolkata: West Bengal BJP Chief Whip Sankar Ghosh fainted and was rushed to hospital, while he was being marshalled out of Assembly after he refused to leave following suspension from House.
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 4, 2025
West Bengal Assembly LoP Suvendu Adhikari (@SuvenduWB) says, “These marshals and… pic.twitter.com/8EiXjUPcgo
Shortly afterwards the BJP's Agnimitra Paul was also suspended.
And all of this was accompanied by 'Bharat mata ki jai' and 'Jai Shri Ram' slogans, and claims by the BJP MLAs of water bottles being thrown at them. Trinamool MLAs claimed paper was thrown at them.
When Ms Banerjee was finally able to speak, she ripped into the BJP, accusing them of being "shameless" and "anti-Bengali", and ordering the Border Security Force to "beat up our people".
"The BJP wasn't even born when the freedom struggle began," she told the House, also attacking her rivals over 'vote chori' claims; the Congress-led INDIA bloc, the national-level anti-BJP alliance, has accused the party of 'colluding' with the Election Commissiont to commit voter fraud.
"The BJP has sold the nation. They don't want to listen to the voice of the people," Ms Banerjee said.
VIDEO | Speaking in the state Assembly, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) criticises the BJP over Bangla language issue. "They are the biggest dacoit party... 'vote chor'," she says amid sloganeering by the opposition MLAs.#BengalNews
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 4, 2025
(Source: Third Party)… pic.twitter.com/E1KVUAephw
The BJP responded with 'chor, chor' slogans of its own against the Trinamool boss and disrupted her speech again, at which point Speaker Banerjee, again, warned against unseemly protests.
The face-off this afternoon underlines tension and acrimony between the two camps before next year's Assembly election, when the under-fire Trinamool faces its biggest challenge yet.
Mamata Banerjee will bid for a fourth straight election win and stint as Chief Minister, having also dominated the state and beaten the BJP (and the Congress) in federal elections since 2009.
And, ahead of the 2026 Assembly poll, Ms Banerjee delivered a sharp warning, "A day will come when not a single BJP MLA will sit in this House. The people will throw you out. (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and (Home Minister) Amit Shah-led central government will collapse soon."
Suvendu Adhikari, meanwhile, hit back with a biting X post in which he accused the Trinamool and his former boss, Ms Banerjee, of having "murdered democracy". "Today... democracy was murdered by the democracy-killer Mamata and her servile administration," he raged.
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