West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said the state has decided to the ban the controversial movie ‘The Kerala Story’ in West Bengal, citing a threat to law and order in the state.
After a press conference at the state administration headquarters, Mamata directed Chief Secretary Harikrishna Dwivedi to impose a state-wide ban, saying, “The film will not be screened in any hall in Bengal.”
Accused by non-BJP parties of false propaganda about women converting to Islam in Kerala and their migration abroad to join ISIS, the film also ran into trouble in Tamil Nadu, where the Tamil Nadu Theater and Multiplex Owners Association pulled it from multiplexes on Sunday. The BJP accused the DMK of being the hand of the government in this decision.
Mamata claimed she had learned that preparations were underway for a similar film based in West Bengal, called The Bengal Files, and said she held the CPI(M), which rules Kerala, as responsible as the BJP. “They are working with the BJP. It was their responsibility to criticize the film, not mine. I want to tell Kerala Chief Minister (Pinarai Vijayan) that your party is working with BJP, which Kerala Files (story), is showing a distorted story. First they defamed Kashmir, then Kerala,” Trinamool Congress supremo said.