Mamata Banerjee on Friday said she had a question: “I want to ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi, doesn’t he feel ashamed comparing our country with Pakistan?”

The Bengal chief minister posed the question at a public meeting in Siliguri before leading her first march in north Bengal against the CAA-NRC-NPR, where the large turnout surprised even Trinamul leaders.

“Are you Pakistan’s ambassador? Have you been put in this post to glorify Pakistan day and night?” Mamata continued.

On Thursday, Modi had said in Karnataka that those raising slogans against the amended citizenship law should protest against Pakistan and the persecution of minorities in that country.

“If someone says that I am unemployed, give me a job, he says, ‘Go to Pakistan’,” Mamata said.

“Whenever anybody speaks on issues like unemployment, food, industry or citizenship, they are told to go to Pakistan. Despite being the Prime Minister of India, he seems to have forgotten his own country and goes on and on about Pakistan,” she said. “Why should we think about Pakistan? We want to think about Hindustan and the problems here.”

Sources in Trinamul said Mamata had brought up the issue to “expose” how the Modi regime uses Pakistan to divert attention whenever faced with difficult questions, whether on the economy, the citizenship law or elections.

The BJP’s stellar show in the last Lok Sabha polls had been partly linked to its success in creating an anti-Pakistan narrative with the air strikes, made purportedly on a terror camp in Balakot. Before the October Assembly polls in Haryana, Modi had threatened to stop the flow of river water to Pakistan.

Mamata also took a swipe at the BJP-run state governments, accusing them of throttling democracy. “You (BJP leaders) are freely coming to Calcutta and visiting other places (in Bengal), holding rallies and criticising me. But then, why are you denying us entry in Uttar Pradesh and Guwahati?” she said.

The Trinamul Congress chief was referring to visits by her party MPs to Guwahati (during the NRC exercise) and recently to Lucknow. The police in Assam and Uttar Pradesh, both ruled by the BJP, did not let them move out of the airport.

Mamata also addressed the concerns of the non-Bengali population in Siliguri and surrounding areas and sought their support.

“There are people from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and some other states who live in Bengal now. All of them are residents of our state. Now if you are being asked to show 50-year-old documents of your families, will it be possible for you?” Mamata said.

The Trinamul chief announced a march on January 9 from Barasat to Madhyamgram in North 24-Parganas and on January 22 in the Darjeeling hills.