The politics of fact-finding teams was played out in Bengal on Monday evening with the BJP and Trinamul announcing their respective teams to Bengal and Manipur.

The BJP’s national chief J.P. Nadda announced a fact-finding team to visit Bengal in the aftermath of the panchayat poll violence. Within an hour, Trinamul countered the move by announcing its delegation to visit the BJP-ruled Manipur.

Four members from each party were nominated for the respective teams. While BJP’s team is supposed to land in Bengal on Tuesday, the Trinamul delegation will reach the violence-stricken Manipur on July 14.

On Monday evening around 5.11pm, Nadda’s Bengal counterpart Sukanta Majumdar shared the notice issued by national general secretary and BJP headquarters in-charge Arun Singh on a Twitter post.

“Thank BJP National President Shri J P Nadda to form a 4 member facts finding committee to visit the violence affected areas of the West Bengal,” Majumdar wrote in his tweet.

According to a notification issued by Singh, these four people will “visit the violence-affected areas inwest Bengal, where many people were killed in panchayat-related election violence.”

At 6.02pm, the official Twitter handle of the Trinamul Congress announced that they will be sending a fact-finding team to Manipur to “provide some healing comfort” to the people of the state, which has been on the boil for the last three months. More than 140 people have already been killed in the Northeastern state.

BJP’s fact-finding team will consist of MPs Ravishankar Prasad, Satyapal Singh, Rajdeep Roy and Rekha Verma, while Trinamul MPs Derek O’Brien, Kalyan Banerjee, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Dola Sen will be a part of their party’s delegation to Manipur.

Though Trinamul did not spell it out, it was apparent that their decision to send a delegation to Manipur isa move to counter BJP’sdecision to send its team to Bengal.

“The BJP is least bothered about Manipur where their government is ruling and it is their divisive politics that has led to the death of over 140 people. But they are busy sending people to Bengal because the people of the state have defeated them in 2021,” a Trinamul leader said.

During their visit, the delegation from Bengal will also highlight the conspicuous silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Manipur issue as well, sources said.

For the saffron camp, however, it is nothing new to send such fact-finding teams to the state. They have done so earlier on several occasions such as when the BJP alleged that their workers were assaulted and killed in the post-poll violence in 2021.

According to a state BJP leader, it has been the party’s motive to paint the Trinamul in a bad picture nationally, as Mamata Banerjee gears up to take on Narendra Modi in the ensuing Lok Sabha polls.

The leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, on Monday, reiterated his demand of imposing Article 355 in the state alleging Mamata failed as home minister.

A political commentator said both sides are involved in a “contest of hiding uncomfortable truths”.