West Bengal village observes Swami Vivekananda's birthday on January 23

According to reports, Trinamool Congress (TMC) ruled Khanyadihi village panchayat in East Medinipur's Kolaghat block on Wednesday morning arranged a programme in front of the panchayat office to observe the Indian nationalist's birthday where the incident took place.

Besides the president, vice president and other elected members of the panchayat, local people and children were reportedly present at the event.

Local media reports said that from garlanding photo to giving speech on the occasion and from hoisting Indian national flag in 'reverse' order to singing national anthem — everything was 'perfectly' done during the entire event in front of Swami Vivekananda's portrait.

Hours later, few locals spotted the 'historical' blunder and informed the panchayat officials.

Staffers of the gram panchayat immediately replaced Swami Vivekananda's portrait by Netaji's and hoisted the tricolour in right order, but it was too late and the entire locality had already started laughing at the mistake.     

Condemning of the incident, local CPI-M MLA from Panskura Purba (East) assembly constituency, Sk Ibrahim Ali, told IBNS, "This incident proves the decreasing status of education and culture in West Bengal during the regime of TMC."

"It's very shocking that children were also present at the event and they learnt a completely wrong lesson about Netaji and his legacy," the MLA added.

East Medinipur district president of BJP, Pradip Das, said that such blunder was expected from TMC and its members.

"Such blunders are expected from TMC, a party which never observed wise men's birthdays or death anniversaries without posting the portrait of Mamata Banerjee," the BJP leader said.

However, accepting their error, president of  Khanyadihi gram panchayat, Supriya Panja, said, "We are extremely sorry and apologized for the 'unintentional' mistake."       

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)