In a no-holds-barred attack on the ruling Trinamool Congress on Saturday, BJP supremo Amit Shah accused West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee of wanting to shelter Bangladeshi infiltrators as they have become her party’s vote bank.
Shah used the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam to take pot shots at Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress following Banerjee’s bitter opposition to it.
“We will make sure that the process of NRC Assam is carried out peacefully. Neither Mamata Banerjee nor Rahul Gandhi can stop us from doing it,” Shah said addressing a huge public rally at Kolkata’s Mayo Road organised by the Bharatiya Janata Yava Morcha.
“We want to ask Mamata Banerjee why is she protecting Bangladeshi infiltrators? Rahul Gandhi also is not clarifying his stand on the issue. This is because of Congress’ vote-bank politics.”
“For us country comes first, before vote bank. Oppose us as much as you want but we will not stall the process of NRC,” he said.
He devoted most of his 25-minute speech on the question of citizenship screening exercise trying to highlight how Banerjee was trying to make political capital out of it, but stopped short of saying that a citizenship screening exercise will be conducted in Bengal. He asked the crowd whether they want it in the state, to which the people responded with a resounding “yes”.
{{/usCountry}}He devoted most of his 25-minute speech on the question of citizenship screening exercise trying to highlight how Banerjee was trying to make political capital out of it, but stopped short of saying that a citizenship screening exercise will be conducted in Bengal. He asked the crowd whether they want it in the state, to which the people responded with a resounding “yes”.
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Four years after he vowed to uproot the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, BJP president Amit Shah reiterated it again on Saturday.
“We are here to uproot Mamata,” Shah said.
Referring to posters that said “Anti-Bengali Amit Shah Go Back”, the BJP president said, “How can I be anti-Bengali? Our party was founded by a great son of Bengal, Shyama Prasad Mookerji.”
Bengal is a focus state for the BJP with Shah setting a target for his party workers to win at least 22 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the general elections next year.
Shah even accused the ruling party of sabotaging the rally’s coverage
“Signals of all Bengali channels have been lowered so that people will not be able to watch us. But even if you try to suppress our voices, we will go to every district of Bengal and throw TMC out.”
BJP Yuva Morcha president Poonam Mahajan remarked there has been no “parivartan” (change) in Bengal. “TMC has become terror making machine. Parivartan has come only for scamsters,” she alleged.
“The youths of Bengal are migrating elsewhere for work, but Rohingyas are being sheltered here,” alleged BJP Bengal unit president Dilip Ghosh.
(With ANI inputs)