Visva Bharati students to screen BBC’s documentary during Rajnath visit

Kolkata: The students’ wing of the Democratic Students’ Association (DSA) in Visva Bharati University in West Bengal’s Birbhum district announced that they will screen the controversial BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the campus on Thursday to coincide with arrival of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh for the university’s convocation ceremony.

The Defence Minister and Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar are scheduled to arrive at Bolpur-Santiniketan late Thursday evening and attend the convocation ceremony scheduled on Friday morning.

According to DSA spokesman Subho Nath, the BBC documentary will be screened at Nimtala Ground at the Ratanpalli area at 6 p.m. on Thursday. BJP’s Birbhum district unit has already criticised the move.

BJP’s Birbhum district President Dhoruba Saha said that a member of a students’ wing “with Maoist affiliation” had deliberately planned this screening at the time of the Defence Minister’s visit just to insult him. “These fake leftists tried to create a similar ruckus within Jawaharlal Nehru University at New Delhi over this documentary. However, the people of India do not trust them and they are totally isolated from the people,” he claimed.

However, the DSA spokesman said that the timing of the screening coinciding with the visit of the Defence Minister is totally coincidental. “We have nothing against Rajnath Singh. The BBC documentary has been screened in several universities in the state already. At the same time the venue of the screening is quite at a distance from the venue of the convocation ceremony,” he said.