Kolkata: In a full-blown attack against the BJP, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that she is willing to die but will not let the saffron party conduct the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state. Speaking on the occasion of Eid from the Red Road in Kolkata, Mamata alleged that the BJP is trying to change the constitution of the country and pursuing politics of hate to divide the country.
"If democracy will go away, everything will go away. Today Constitution is being changed, history is being changed. They brought NRC; I told them that I will not let them do that," the Bengal CM stated.
The BJP had made NRC a major political weapon in the run-up to the last West Bengal Assembly elections. Many criticised the saffron party for their communal statements like 'weeding out illegal Muslim population" as a result of NRC.
The West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee visited Red Road in Kolkata where people offered namaz on the occasion of Eid-Ul-Fitr. Addressing the gathering, Mamata Banerjee said, "We want peace in Bengal. We don't want riots. We want shanti (peace)." She was referring to the clashes that broke out in the state during Ram Navami.
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Attacking the BJP, the West Bengal CM said that the BJP does not have the courage to divide Muslim votes. "It is my promise to you today. There is one year to elections. See who will get elected and who won't," she said. She appealed to people to stay peaceful come what may and not to listen to the saffron party's claims.
Mamata said that she needs to put up a fight against a "gaddar" (betrayer) party and the agencies as well. "I fight them because I have the courage to do so but I am not ready to cow down," she added.
Referring to the Gujarat government granting remission to 11 convicts she said, "Everyone was released in the Bilkis case. But we will not tolerate all this. We will fight and we will win."
A few days earlier, in another attack against the BJP, Trinamool Congress supremo vowed to resign if Bengal Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari could prove that she had called up Amit Shah after Trinamool Congress was excluded from the list of national parties by the ECI. The TMC suffered a major setback when it was derecognised by the Election Commission as a 'national party' a few weeks back.
