Mamata must sack MP: Amar Singh

Leftist activists burn an effigy of Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Paul in Kolkata yesterday.

IANS/Kolkata

Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Amar Singh yesterday said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will face “grave consequences” and “lose a large portion of her supporter base” if she did not expel Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Paul, who is facing heat over his rape and violence remarks.

“Mamata will face grave consequences....she will lose a large portion of her supporter base (if she doesn’t expel him),” Amar Singh said when asked to comment on the ruling Trinamool Congress party’s attitude on the issue, which has grabbed international headlines.

“Being a woman...she should have expelled him,” the RLD leader said on the sidelines of a programme here.

Describing Paul as mentally sick” and a “very bad person,” Singh said an apology was not enough. “He should be chucked out from the party.”

Paul, an MP from West Bengal’s Krishnanagar, has been caught on tape exhorting his party workers to kill Communist Party of India (Marxist) activists even as he himself asserted that he would gun down his rivals and let loose his boys to rape their women.

Despite mounting clamour for Paul’s arrest and expulsion from parliament, the Trinamool has sought to end the matter with an apology which he tendered to his party and the media on Tuesday.

But the Bharatiya Janata Party demanded that Paul be put “behind bars.”

BJP’s national vice-president Laxmi Kant Chawla said politicians like Paul should not be a part of any political entity.

He said Banerjee being a woman herself should immediately put the MP behind bars.