The BJP on Sunday picked up the Lok Sabha candidates’ list of the Trinamul Congress to counter the ruling party’s charge that the BJP was anti-Bengal and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was an outsider to the state.

Speaking on the sidelines of the BJP’s rally in Sandeshkhali, BJP state chief Sukanta Majumdar tore into Trinamul’s choice of “outsider” candidates, including former Indian cricketers Yusuf Pathan and Kirti Azad.

Claiming that the choice of candidates had exposed Trinamul’s bankruptcy, Majumdar said: “Today, before announcing the candidates, Abhishek Banerjee said the BJP is anti-Bengal. Once the candidates were announced, it became clear to us that Trinamul was bringing people from outside to fight the polls. I don’t know how Yusuf Pathan and Kirti Azad qualify as Bengalies. Yusuf Pathan hails from Gujrat like our Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But to Trinamul, Modi is an outsider.”

Announcing its list of candidates at the Brigade Parade Grounds rally on Sunday, Trinamul national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said the party had nominated Pathan from Berhampore and Azad from the Burdwan-Durgapur Lok Sabha constituency.

Earlier, speaking at the rally in Sandeshkhali’s Nazat, BJP leaders came down heavily on the Trinamul leader tagging the saffron party as anti-Bengal and Modi as an outsider.

Hitting back at Trinamul for its attack on the Prime Minister, Majumdar said: “They (Trinamul) are saying Narendra Modi is an outsider. He is an outsider to them because he speaks to protect the modesty of Sandeshkhali women.... Narendra Modi is a better Bengali than many Trinamul leaders as he bothers about the state of Bengal’s women.”

The rally was held in Nazat following a Calcutta High Court order.

The North 24-Parganas district administration had initially denied permission to hold the meeting on the grounds that Trinamul would organise its rally on the Brigade Parade Grounds in Calcutta on the same day.

The Balurghat MP said his daughter studied in a Bengali medium school and asked Abhishek to “show the courage to admit his kids to Bengali medium schools”.

Speaking at the rally, BJP leaders were unsparing on chief minister Mamata Banerjee for not bothering to visit Sandeshkhali and stand by the aggrieved women of the island in North 24-Parganas.

“At a time when women were raising their voices against the atrocities of Trinamul leader Sheikh Shahjahan and his men, our chief minister should be ashamed that she was busy defending the criminal,” Majumdar said.

Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, asked BJP supporters to raise their voices against “Trinamul tyrants” like Shahjahan, who had unleashed a reign of terror at many places across the state.

“From this meeting, we would appeal to the Election Commission and central investigating agencies that only arresting Shahjahan will not just help, rather goons like Jiaruddin Mollah and others should be put in jail,” he said.

Custody

A court in Basirhat on Sunday extended the CBI custody of Sheikh Shahjahan by another four days on a prayer by the central agency, reports PTI.