In December 2020, just months before the high stake assembly election, BJP national president JP Nadda’s convoy was attacked in Diamond Harbour, South 24 Pargana district. Stones hurled, cars smashed, and the message was clear – Bengal’s politics would again be fought not only with votes, but with violence. Five years later, Bengal is approaching another assembly election. And here is a deja vu, only, in a bloodier way than before.

When BJP’s tribal MP Khagen Murmu’s car was similarly pelted with stones on Monday, it felt less like a new eruption and more like a grim continuation. The visuals of blood-soaked Murmu fetched reactions, built an one-sided social media outage, triggered some local protests, a condemnation message from PM Modi, and a counter from the state’s CM Mamata Banerje

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