Mamata Banerjee returned to Nandigram on Sunday, hosting two rallies in the afternoon and evening and visiting Birulia Bazaar where she had suffered injuries to the left foot on March 10, and alleging that it had been an attack aimed at immobilising her during the election campaign.

The chief minister said she had got injured at Birulia Bazaar, when “four-five people” had slammed the door of an SUV she was travelling in during her campaign at Nandigram.

“I was standing on the footboard to greet people.… Suddenly, four-five people slammed the door on me, and my ankle got smashed. It started bleeding,” said Mamata, addressing a rally at a ground barely a few hundred meters from the site of the incident.

“There was a conspiracy and it was an attack to immobilise me during the campaign.”

After conducting two programmes — one each in Chandipur and Reyapara — she came to Birulia.

“I am here to clarify what happened that day... some people had said that the car had hit a pillar. It’s wrong,” she said, referring to the BJP’s allegations.

Then, Mamata took care to explain that although she got injured she didn’t hold any grudge against anyone in Nandigram.

“I came here to thank that young man, who got a pack of ice for me after I was hurt,” said the Trinamul Congress chief, while adding that the gesture of the youth proved how much the people of Nandigram loved her.

In her 40-minute address, Mamata took care to explain her close association with Nandigram since the anti-land acquisition movement of 2007.

The chief minister also used the occasion to counter the BJP narrative, that the Nandigram movement was led by Trinamul turncoat Suvendu Adhikari, now the BJP’s candidate.

“I was planning the protests and sending people here... after the March 14 firing, when I came here, the father and son duo were not here,” she said.

“Now they call me an outsider? I could have contested from any seat in Bengal. But I chose this place because you wanted me,” she added.

Mamata’s Sunday events marked the beginning of a five-day stay in the area.

Mamata is taking on her former protege Suvendu Adhikari, who left Trinamul and joined the BJP, at Nandigram.

She gave her usual call to unity in the face of Hindutva and remonstration toward the “father-son” turncoat duo of the Adhikari clan.

Mamata also mocked Union home minister Amit Shah over his claim, made in New Delhi, that the BJP would win in at least 26 of the 30 seats that went to the polls in Phase I on Saturday.

“Yesterday, votes for 30 seats in Bengal were cast.... Amit Shah is saying the BJP will get 26.... They will get golla (zero),” she said.

Mamata was especially critical of central forces deployed in the state, alleging that they had been acting out of order.

“Central police have been beating people over here... I don’t know who is directing all this, but people are being denied their right to vote because they are not wearing a mask. This is not the police’s role,” she added.

The chief minister’s evening address at Reyapara, a residential area, was a mixture of culture and politics, with Mamata paying her regards on the occasion of Holi as well as lashing out at the Adhikaris.

Signing off, Mamata made several references to the history of the land agitation, and underscored how contesting from Bhowanipore would have been relatively effortless for her.

“It is your love, how you reacted to the idea when I first brought it up (in January), which encouraged me to contest from here,” she said.

“I am contesting from here to honour the innumerable icons of our struggle for freedom who were born here,” added Mamata.

The chief minister repeatedly underscored the inclusive, pluralistic worldview of her party, contrasting it with that of the BJP.

“The BJP may say otherwise, but in my party, Hindus and Muslims are two petals of the same flower.… Does anyone remember Kazi Nazrul Islam as a Muslim poet? Or Rabindranath Tagore as a Hindu poet? No, they are remembered as poets of the world,” she added.