Will uproot Trinamool in Bengal, says Shah
BJP chief slams Mamata on NRC, graft
KOLKATA: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah on Saturday accused West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee of sheltering “Bangladeshi infiltrators”, saying they have become a vote bank for her Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Shah lashed out at the TMC for opposing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updated recently in Assam as part of the efforts to weed out illegal immigrants. He linked it to Banerjee’s attempt to “fortify her vote bank among the Bangladeshi infiltrators”. Shah blamed Banerjee’s government for misusing central funds to pamper the “syndicate” raj and “diminution of the Hindu influence” in West Bengal.
The TMC hit back and asked Shah to apologise within 72 hours or face legal action. “He has resorted to blatant lies to allege corruption against Mamata Banerjee. He also crossed limits of decency by dishonouring the ethos of Bengal,” said TMC’s Rajya Sabha member and spokesman Derek O’Brien. He did not specify which portions of Shah’s speech he was referring to.
Shah devoted most of his 25-minute speech to the alleged infiltration of Bangladeshi migrants. “Why do you want to shelter infiltrators, I want to ask Mamata didi?” Shah said in his address at Yuva Swabhiman Samabesh, organised by the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the BJP’s youth wing. “They have become her vote bank.” Shah insisted that for the BJP, the country comes first.
Shah stopped short of promising a citizenship screening exercise on the lines of Assam in Bengal. He asked the crowd whether they wanted NRC in the state. The crowd responded by saying yes.
The no-holds-barred attack on the TMC gave an indication of the line of attack against TMC in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. West Bengal is crucial to the BJP’s plans of retaining power at the Centre as the party had peaked in other key states in 2014.