Nominated Lok Sabha member George Baker on Tuesday made a veiled attack on the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee. He said that she was a “dictator even as she raises issues of federalism and democracy outside the State.”
A report in the The Indian Express quoted Baker as saying: “I feel it is my bounden duty to expose in this House those who are hiding behind the name of federalism and democracy and indulging in dictatorship in West Bengal.” Baker said this during Zero Hour without naming Banerjee.
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Baker, who had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls for BJP from West Bengal, represents the Anglo-Indian community in the Lower House. He said: “We are finding that invariably whenever there is any election, there is no democratic process at all; people are not allowed to go and file their nominations. They are not even allowed to go and vote. At the same time, these are the people who shout and scream about democracy.”
Mamata Banerjee has created a ruckus over the publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) final draft in Assam on July 30 last. She has made a lot of controversial statements like the Assam and the Central Governments are playing a “divide and rule” politics and “We cannot push back the 40 lakh citizens who have been left out. It will lead to bloodbath and civil war.”
Coming to George Baker, he was born in Tezpur, Assam, in a Greek family and has been a prolific actor in Assamese and Bengali movies since the late 1970s. He had also served in the Northeast Frontier Railway Zone in the Engineering Department.
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Baker made his first foray into Assamese cinema in 1974. He played the lead role in the Assamese film Chameli Memsaab and the film went on to win the National Film Award for the Best Feature Film in Assamese at the 23rd National Film Awards.
He played the role of Berkeley, a British planter who falls for a native girl, Chameli, (played by Binita Borgohain) and is later accused for her murder. Baker later played the same role in the Bengali version of the same movie.