Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh and a group of over 1,000 party workers were stopped by police from holding a march in Nandigram in support of the amended citizenship regime on Saturday, with cops citing lack of permission for such an event.

Ghosh was to lead the Abhinandan Yatra from Pengua to the main local market 3km away. After the police stopped them at Reyapara, 7km from Pengua, the BJP workers clashed with the police.

The BJP workers alleged that the police attacked them with lathis without any provocation. The police said they exercised caution while permitting political programmes at Nandigram ever since the 2007 land agitation.

In his address to the BJP workers at Reyapara, Ghosh said: “In 2007, the police had stopped Mamata Banerjee at Reyapara. Today, they are stopping me. You can understand what that means. We (the BJP) had supported her in 2007 because we thought democracy would come to this region. But that did not happen.”