Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday launched a scathing attack against Union Home Minister Amit Shah, questioning if the BJP was “conspiring” against her life.
Addressing a campaign rally at the Patharkata football ground in Manbazar, in Purulia district, Banerjee slammed Shah’s recent remarks on her previous leg injury she suffered during the 2021 Assembly polls, saying, “They say I roamed around with bandages. Why don’t they check the medical reports? Do you have no shame?” “Even in the previous election, you purposely hurt my leg. I traveled in a wheelchair because I am strong from within. Are they planning to kill me now? Their words prove they are conspiring something,” CM Banerjee alleged.
Banerjee, however, did not name Shah while making the allegation.
This comes a day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah released a ‘chargesheet’ against the TMC government and accused the ruling party’s supremo of having “always played the politics of the victim card”. “Sometimes she talks about her injury; sometimes she abuses the Election Commission. But the people of West Bengal now understand her victim card politics very well,” Shah had said on Saturday.
Lashing out at Shah, without directly naming him Mamata Banerjee said he should be chargesheeted “for his past deeds”.
“Yesterday, one of BJP’s leaders, who has come to power by propagating violence, presented a chargesheet against West Bengal. A chargesheet should be filed against him first. He was responsible for the deaths of so many in Gujarat,” the chief minister said.
Referring to the deportation of Indians from the US last year by the Donald Trump administration, Banerjee said, “Where were you when Gujaratis were brought back from America in chains? They accuse us of changing Bengal’s demography from 2002–2011. Do they not have any sense? Were we in power in 2002? We came to power in May 2011.”
The Chief Minister leveled serious allegations against the Election Commission’s recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, claiming that over 1.2 crore names of voters have been deleted across Bengal, ahead of the assembly polls.
“Names of women are being “adjudicated” simply for changing surnames after marriage. Massive deletions have been reported in the Jungle Mahal and Burdwan regions, including 400 names in a single block (Suti),” said Mamata, promising to “set up camps and provide free legal counsel to help disenfranchised voters appeal at tribunals.”
Urging voters to look beyond local candidates and vote for her leadership, CM Banerjee introduced local candidates Sandhya Rani Tudu, Rajib Lochan Saren, and Sujoy Banerjee. “I am the candidate everywhere. When you vote just think you are voting for me,” she said.
She even reminded the people of Purulia of the “dark days” of Jungle Mahal before 2011, contrasting it with the current peace and the Matir Shristi Prakalpa which has turned arid land cultivable.