West Bengal Tableau row: Here's what defence ministry official has to say

The Centre on Sunday rejected West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's proposal to include a tableau proposed for the R-Day parade themed on the state’s freedom fighters.

The government on Sunday announced its decision to begin Republic Day celebrations on January 23 to coincide with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's 125th birth anniversary.

Expressing shock over the Centre’s decision to exclude West Bengal’s tableau, the Chief Minister on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to reconsider the decision as people of the state would be “pained” by the move.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) which takes care of the selection process of tableaux, said the entire process follows a set of guidelines and a committee comprising experts from the fields of art, architecture, design, culture and music takes the final call. The official denied any bias against West Bengal.

In a letter to the chief secretaries of all states and Union Territories this year, the Ministry of Defence had said that the selection process of tableaux is an elaborate and time-consuming exercise and that in view of time constraints, the ministry will be able to include only a limited number of proposals.

In 2016, West Bengal’s tableau on Baul singers was awarded as the best.

Banerjee’s letter stated that the proposed tableau was to commemorate Netaji and his Indian National Army on his 125th birth anniversary and the model carried portraits of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Vivekananda, Chittaranjan Das, Sri Aurobindo, Matangini Hazra, Birsa Munda and Nazrul Islam.

A former member of the committee said tableaux from West Bengal qualified for the parade in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2019, and in 2016 the State has adjudged the best tableau for its famous Baul folk singers rendering the songs based on Bhakti and Sufi movement.

This is not the first time that the state tableau for the Republic Day parade has been rejected. In 2020, too, tableaus from West Bengal, Maharashtra, Kerala and Bihar were rejected, leading to an outcry from the states.

Bengal at that time had alleged that the exclusion happened because the state opposed the Citizenship Amendment Bill. The claim was rejected by the Defence Ministry, which said the West Bengal government’s proposal was turned down after an expert committee examined it in two meetings.

(with sources inputs)