Trinamul Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Wednesday referred to Rahul Gandhi's disqualification as an MP and asked why the same law would not apply against Narendra Modi, who taunted the Bengal chief minister multiple times and in turn insulted the women in the state.

"We condemned the way Rahul Gandhi was disqualified as an MP. If he is disqualified for defaming the Modi community, why would Prime Minister Narendra Modi not be disqualified for insulting the women of Bengal? You all will remember that ahead of the 2021 Assembly polls, he had taunted our chief minister at least 10 times, by calling her 'Didi o Didi'.... If Rahul Gandhi can face conviction for his comments, why won't the Prime Minister?" Abhishek asked while addressing a gathering of over 12,000 people at the Shaheed Minar grounds here on Wednesday afternoon.

The programme was organised by the student and the youth wings of Trinamul to protest the Centre's stepmotherly treatment towards Bengal.

In his address, Abhishek gave a detailed account of how the Centre was withholding over Rs 1.15 lakh crore, the state's legitimate due, to punish the people of Bengal for not voting for the BJP in the 2021 Assembly polls.

A Surat court on March 23 convicted Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case relating to the “Modi” surname and awarded a two-year sentence. The Lok Sabha secretariat soon disqualified him as an MP.

"We will file a defamation case against the Prime Minister. We will go to court in a month’s time.... We want to see that judges are impartial as the law that is applicable for Rahul Gandhi should also apply to the Prime Minister," said Abhishek in his second address of the day — at the sit-in demonstration venue of chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Mamata began a 30-hour sit-in near the Ambedkar statue in the Maidan area to protest the manner in which the Indian Constitution had come under threat during the BJP regime.

In his first rally, Abhishek also threatened legal action against BJP MLA and leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari for allegedly insulting two tribal MLAs of Trinamul and thus humiliating the entire Scheduled Tribe community.

A source in Trinamul said Adhikari had in January 2021 made a derogatory comment about minister and Jhargram MLA Birbaha Hansda and Binpur MLA Debnath Hansda after he was prevented from entering Netai, a remote village in Jhargram district, where nine lives were lost in indiscriminate firing on January 7, 2011.

"He had told reporters that he kept leaders like me and Birbaha under his shoes.... It did not only hurt us but the entire tribal community. We have already lodged complaints with the police in this connection," Debnath told The Telegraph, recounting the incident that Trinamul wants to use against Adhikari.

In both the rallies, Abhishek rolled out several statistics to launch an attack on the BJP-led Centre for not giving Bengal its due from the central pool of funds. He also held the BJP MPs from Bengal responsible for the freeze on the flow of funds from Delhi. "The BJP got 18 seats from Bengal in the 2019 elections... These people conspired to send 151 central teams to Bengal in two years with the sole objective of freezing flow of funds to the state," said Abhishek