BJP Demolishes Mamata-Designed Football Sculpture Outside Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium, Days After Minister Called It ‘Grotesque’

A football sculpture outside Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium designed by former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and installed in 2017 ahead of the FIFA U-17 World Cup was demolished on Saturday morning by the BJP government, days after Bengal Sports Minister Nisith Pramanik publicly pledged to remove it.

Locals near the VVIP gate of the stadium were surprised to find the structure gone on Saturday. The sculpture, which featured two legs cut at the torso with a football above them, had divided opinion since its unveiling with football supporters frequently criticising its design even as it became a recognisable landmark outside the stadium that has hosted East Bengal-Mohun Bagan derbies and, more recently, Lionel Messi.

The structure also carried the ‘Biswa Bangla’ logo, the signature emblem of the previous Trinamool Congress government.

BJP leader Keya Ghosh marked its removal on social media. “Remember this abomination in front of Salt Lake stadium? Now it has been removed as promised,” she wrote.

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The demolition follows through on commitments made at the highest levels of the new BJP administration. A day after being sworn in as Bengal’s first BJP Chief Minister, Suvendu Adhikari had stated the structure would come down. Pramanik reinforced that position earlier this week.

“Such an ugly-looking statue… It does not look aesthetically pleasing either. So we will not keep such a grotesque structure that has no meaning, and it will be taken down,” Pramanik told reporters on May 17. The minister added that the government had planned several infrastructure upgrades at the stadium.

Pramanik also drew a political line from the sculpture to TMC’s electoral defeat. “I feel that after this statue was installed, the bad days of the previous government started. Then the Messi controversy happened, and the government lost power,” he said.

The reference to Messi points to last December’s mismanagement during his GOAT India Tour, when chaos and vandalism broke out at Salt Lake Stadium, with fans placing blame on the TMC administration.