Picture : ANI/ X
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has sharpened the BJP’s campaign pitch for the West Bengal assembly polls, releasing a “charge sheet” against the TMC government and framing the election as a battle not merely for Bengal, but for the country’s security.
Launching a broadside against the Mamata Banerjee government at a press conference , Shah alleged that after 15 years of the TMC rule, West Bengal had become the country’s “principal corridor” for infiltration due to “TMC’s appeasement politics, corruption and political violence”.
In a state where Banerjee, the TMC supremo, has often capitalised her image of a besieged streetfighter, Shah sought to puncture that narrative first.
“Mamata Didi has always played the politics of the victim card. Sometimes she talks about her injury, sometimes she abuses the Election Commission. But the people of Bengal now understand Mamata Didi’s victim-card politics very well,” he said.
Hitting out at Banerjee over her opposition to the Election Commission’s SIR exercise, Shah accused her of manufacturing outrage to protect the TMC’s “minority vote bank”.
“The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has taken place in other states too, but nowhere has it been made such an issue. It has been made an issue in Bengal only because Mamata Banerjee wants to protect her vote bank. Abusing constitutional bodies like the Election Commission is not part of Bengali culture,” Shah said.
National Security Concerns
Claiming that infiltration through Assam had “almost come to an end” after the BJP came to power there, Shah alleged that West Bengal has now emerged as the “last remaining route through which infiltrators enter India and disperse across states”.
“The Bengal election is important not only for Bengal but for the entire country. The security of the entire country is, in a way, linked to the Bengal election,” Shah said.
He claimed that illegal immigration through the borders of West Bengal had become a matter of concern for national security.
