Mamata Banerjee alleged in the Assembly on Thursday that the BJP was trying to create communal disharmony in Bengal for electoral purposes just like it had engineered the strife in Manipur.
“(The BJP’s) main agenda will be… to divide society on caste and religious lines to get mileage in the election here.... They started the communal riots in Manipur,” the chief minister said.
“The BJP MPs and MLAs must go and ask the Prime Minister to visit Manipur,” she added.
Since May 3, Manipur has been witnessing the fiercest incidents of violence between the majority Meitei community and the Kukis.
“The BJP's Hindutva agenda has turned Manipur into a battlefield... That's why Didi tried to forewarn, along with the example of Manipur, how the BJP is planning to divide Bengal," a Trinamul Congress leader said.
During her 47-minute address in the Assembly, Mamata alleged that the Bengal unit of the BJP had been asked by the BJP and RSS leadership in Delhi to pursue the divisive agenda for gains in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The chief minister said the decisions had been passed on to the state BJP leaders during a recent meeting in Delhi.
The Telegraph had earlier reported that state BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar, leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and other party leaders had attended a meeting with national leaders of the RSS such as Arun Kumar, a joint general secretary, and Pradip Joshi in Delhi on Monday. BJP's national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh, an RSS appointee, was also present.
Later, there were two separate meetings, one with national BJP president J.P. Nadda and the other with Union home minister Amit Shah.
Stressing that she had competitive intelligence on what had transpired at the meeting with the RSS leaders, Mamata said the state BJP functionaries had been asked to highlight crimes against women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in Bengal to get their sympathy.
"So, (the BJP's movements in the state) are pre-planned. (These people) who are assaulting the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, they are even urinating on Dalits in Uttar Pradesh. They do not have any shame,” she said.
Mamata added the BJP planned to create situations where the state government could be shown in poor light. They will be targeting the Rajbanshis, the tribal population, the Gorkhas and the Matuas to create ethnic rifts.
“They will try to create divisions in the Muslim community to reap political benefits in the elections. They will fund any party which can divide the votes of Trinamul,” she alleged. The chief minister added the BJP could even fund parties, which are primarily supported by minorities.
Reacting to the chief minister’s allegations, Adhikari said the BJP didn't believe in the politics of division. “The BJP believes in the politics of bringing (people) together,” he said. “How does she know what happened in the meeting? Was she there?”