Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday had to leave the campaign stage in the middle of her speech in her Bhabanipur Assembly constituency, after “chor (thief)” slogans were allegedly raised by some BJP supporters.
The noise allegedly came from a BJP rally, which was passing by the TMC rally late Saturday night, while the chief minister was campaigning near the Swaminarayan temple on Chakraberia road situated in her home turf.
“See how they are shouting. All the media is here. It is insulting and humiliating. They are shouting because they don’t want me to hold the meeting. I beg your pardon. I will not be able to address you now. Tomorrow, I will hold another rally here. I apologise and I will leave (now). Please vote for me in protest of this (incident),” said a visibly disturbed CM Banerjee as she left the stage.
“We had taken official permission to hold this meeting. I was away from Bhabanipur for about a month as I was campaigning across the state. I was campaigning for about 200 seats and Abhishek [Banerjee] was also campaigning. I will take legal action against this,” she added.
Reacting to the heckling allegedly by the BJP supporters, senior TMC leader Sovondeb Chatterjee, also present at the rally, said: “Everyone saw what happened. How our chief minister was insulted. This will go against the BJP (in the elections).”
Earlier in the day, Leader of Opposition and Bhabanipur BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari claimed that the TMC put up loudspeakers to disrupt his rally.
The Bhabanipur Assembly seat in Kolkata is set to see a head-on collision between Mamata and Adhikari, who is also contesting from his home turf Nandigram, where he had defeated Mamata by less than 2,000 votes in the 2021 polls.
After the electoral roll revision, 51,000 or 21% of total voters have been deleted in Bhabanipur, putting pressure on the TMC chief, whose victory margin in the 2021 byelection in this seat was about 58,800 votes.
In the final lap of her statewide campaign, Mamata Banerjee is likely to canvas at the grassroots level, a first for the chief minister. In the cosmopolitan Bhabanipur, Mamata is also eyeing to attract non-Bengali voters, by holding padayatras and planning to visit Jain temples and gurdwaras.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, meanwhile, is also camping in the state to oversee the BJP’s campaign.