Kolkata: BJP senior and Bengal assembly's leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari said on Monday that he had never said BJP doesn't want Muslim votes, but Muslims don't vote for BJP in Bengal.
"I never said BJP doesn't want Muslim votes in Bengal. We don't get their votes," Adhikari said while speaking at a rally in Mandirbazar area of South 24 Parganas.
Pointing to how Muslim votes had consolidated in the previous elections, Adhikari said that in Nandigram, he got 400 Muslim votes, CPM's Meenakshi Mukherjee bagged 1,200, and the remaining 64,000 votes went to Trinamool.
"While we speak about development, Trinamool uses clerics to consolidate Muslim votes on religious lines. They (Muslims) have to realise BJP never discriminates on religious lines," Adhikari said.
On SIR, he said illegal Muslim immigrants would be removed from the voters' list. "Trinamool is opposing SIR because it has allowed illegal immigrants and Rohingya people to take shelter here. We won't allow it."
BJP's Bengal minder and Bihar health minister Mangal Panday said, "If illegal voters don't remain, Trinamool won't sustain. Trinamool goons are threatening BLOs and pressuring them to ignore EC rules."
Bengal BJP seniors said Muslim voters in Bihar had the option of diversifying their opinion this time beyond the mahagathbandhan.