Kolkata: 

A question in a highly competitive exam for jobs in the central police forces has become another point of conflict between West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the centre.

Ms Banerjee today alleged the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), which conducts national exams for civil and armed police services, is asking test questions “given by the BJP” and weakening its foundation as an impartial body.

In one of the 200-word questions for entry to the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF), candidates were asked to write a report on “poll violence in West Bengal”.

“The UPSC is asking BJP’s questions. UPSC used to be an impartial body but the BJP is giving it questions to ask. Even the question in a UPSC paper on the protest by farmers was politically motivated,” Ms Banerjee told reporters in Kolkata. “The BJP is destroying institutions like the UPSC,” she said.

Her comments came while announcing easing of COVID-19 restrictions in Bengal.

The Trinamool Congress retained power in Bengal in the assembly election this year, though Ms Banerjee herself lost the election in Nandigram. The BJP has alleged that the state has gone soft on curbing post-poll violence that especially targeted its supporters and leaders following their defeat in the election.

Ms Banerjee’s party and the Bengal government maintain the reports of post-election violence have been greatly exaggerated, with fake videos and images, and most of the incidents of violence that took place around counting day on May 2, when the state police were under the control of the Election Commission.

Last month, in an indictment of the Trinamool government, a committee formed by the National Human Rights Commission on the order of the Calcutta High Court had said the situation in the state was a manifestation of “law of ruler” instead of “rule of law”.

Ms Banerjee then quickly pointed out a man in the committee was a “BJP man”, and claimed that the post-poll violence narrative was concocted by the BJP, sour over the election loss.

One NHRC member has turned out to be a BJP man. He was in the past a frontline ABVP official. I think he has merely gone by the BJP version and contributed his part to the report,” Ms Banerjee told reporters in Kolkata on July 22.

The Calcutta High Court, however, criticised the Mamata Banerjee government as being in “denial mode” about the violence that erupted in May.