Amit Shah denied Netaji stadium for meetings

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Amit Shah will be on a three-day visit to Bengal from September 10 and was supposed to conduct meeting with party workers at Netaji Indoor Stadium. However, it was called off at the last moment due to the unavailability of the venue.

Sayantan Basu, BJP state general secretary said that they had called on August 25 enquiring about the availability of the stadium. "On August 28, we were given a temporary confirmation of the booking and were asked to obtain an NOC from Kolkata Police, but two days later we were told that the place was pre-booked for all of September, except during Durga Puja from September 27 to 30," said Basu. "Naturally we had to call off the proposed meeting because only a place like that could have accommodated about 12,000 senior members who the national president would have interacted with." Shah's other programmes are as per schedule.

Authorities of Netaji Indoor Stadium refused to comment on the issue but senior TMC leaders said they had nothing to do with the place being not available. "The allegations levelled are baseless and completely unfounded. Neither the TMC nor the state government control Netaji Indoor Stadium. They have their own management body," said state education minister Dr Partha Chatterjee.