With senior national leaders present, BJP stops entry to dais during party meet

Ravi Shaw, district secretary of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (Howrah Sadar) was given the responsibility to ensure that no one — on the pretext of taking pictures on mobile phones or posing as mediapersons — is allowed to get up on the stage.

“Yes. We had discussed this internally at the organising committee. We knew there would be national and state level leaders present and was instructed to take a lesson from what had happened at Chandipur. I was alert from the very beginning,” Shaw said.

Popularly known as Hitler, Shaw stood at the stage and did not pay heed to any request from photo journalists who wanted to get on to the stage for a close up of party leaders as they delivered their speeches.

At the request of senior district leaders, Shaw was seen taking their cellphones and shooting the pictures
himself.

Bhanu Prakash Mishra, observer of the state BJP trader cell, however, said: “It was a precautionary step taken for a different reason. It was not a reaction to the Abhishek Banerjee incident. That had taken place because of the boiling anger among people against the Trinamool Congress. Here, we wanted to make sure that people who loved BJP leaders didn’t get up on the stage and create confusion and inconvenience others.”