KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday dared the BJP-led Centre to send her in the detention camp if they have the power to.
Mamata hit the streets of Kolkata to protest the alleged harassment of Bengali-speaking people in BJP-ruled states.
Senior leaders of the party, including TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, joined Banerjee as she led thousands of people in the march, which began from College Square in central Kolkata around 1.45 pm. The march will terminate at Dorina Crossing in Dharmatala.
The nearly 3-km route was wrapped in security, with nearly 1,500 police personnel guarding the barricaded pavements and adjacent buildings.
Vehicular traffic was diverted along multiple arterial roads in the central parts of the city because of the programme.
Similar demonstrations have also been organised by the TMC in the district headquarter towns across the state.
The protests are being held a day ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to the state.
Speaking at a public meeting after the rally Banerjee lashed out at the Centre on what she called, its policy of harassing and mistreating Bengali-speaking people across the country and warned the saffron party of dire political consequences if it did not put an immediate stop to such actions.
Banerjee also alleged that the ruling dispensation at the Centre was “influencing the Election Commission of India” to achieve its political ambitions across states.
“I will challenge the central government notices which were surreptitiously sent to BJP-ruled states to harass Bengali-speaking people and detain them at the slightest suspicion,” the Trinamool Congress supremo alleged.
“I am ashamed and disheartened at the Centre and the BJP's attitude towards Bengalis,” Banerjee claimed.
Expressing her resolve to fight the BJP “inch by inch” if it tried to "persecute" Bengali-speaking people, she said that the saffron camp should remain prepared for a fresh round of ‘Khela Hobey’ (the game-is-on slogan coined ahead of the 2021 state polls) during the assembly elections in 2026.
“I have decided to speak more in Bangla from now on, hold me in detention camps if you can,” she said while attacking the BJP.
Asserting that there are nearly 22 lakh migrant workers from Bengal working in other parts of the country, who have valid identity documents like Aadhar, EPIC and PAN cards, Banerjee said she would not tolerate any disrespect meted out to them on flimsy grounds.
“What right does the BJP have in harassing Bengalis like this, even arresting them and forcefully pushing them back to Bangladesh? Is West Bengal not part of India?” she asked.
Stating that "extreme situations call for extreme counter measures", Banerjee said, "I will say this in the simplest of words. We will not fight you physically. But if the BJP doesn’t put an end to its persecution policies immediately, then the Trinamool Congress knows how to make them stop."
She also said, "The Assam government has displaced 12 lakh people. Because they do not know the Assamese language."
The Chief Minister also targeted the Odisha government and said, "I warn you. I will not kill, I will not cut, I will not distort the language like you. We do not speak the language that you speak. So let me be clear, if you do not stop, you will understand what needs to be done to stop in the future."
Banerjee also said that if Bengalis are aggrieved anywhere, there will be protests in Bengal as well. "We have been hurt. Even though we are hurt, we are united. We will answer," she added.
With less than a year left for the assembly elections in West Bengal, the TMC is raising its pitch over what it alleges is a systematic pattern of linguistic profiling, unlawful detentions, and attempts to brand Bengali speakers as "illegal immigrants."
The TMC usually refrains from holding major public events in the run-up to its annual Shahid Dibas rally on July 21.
But the series of recent incidents, including the detention of migrant workers in Odisha, eviction drives in Delhi, and a notice served to a farmer in Cooch Behar by a foreigners' tribunal in Assam, appears to have compelled the party to shift gears.
The protests also give a glimpse of the thrust of TMC's campaign for the assembly elections, which will be due mid-next year.
The party seems to be betting heavily on rekindling the emotional connection with voters through a campaign that blends identity politics with grassroots mobilisation.
Countering Banerjee's emotive pitch of Bengali pride, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari alleged that the whole exercise of "Bengali asmita" is being flaunted to shield the presence of "Bengali-speaking Rohingyas and illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators."
Adhikari took a dig at the chief minister and asked why she has turned a "deaf ear to the cries of exasperation of thousands of Bengali-speaking teachers in the state who lost their jobs" on account of institutional corruption.
Referring to Banerjee's appointments to the top administrative and police posts in the state, Adhikari asked, "Why were Atri Bhattacharya and Subrata Gupta, two Bengali officers, denied the position of state chief secretary and offered to Manoj Pant, despite the latter being junior to the former two bureaucrats?"
"Why was the senior-most IPS officer Sanjay Mukhopadhyay ignored for the position of DGP where an out-of-state junior, Rajiv Kumar, was posted?" he asked in a post on X.
Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim, who took part in the protest rally, said he wasn't ready to attach too much importance to those allegations.
"Adhikari is saying such things to please his bosses in Delhi. His tactic will not work here," he said.
(With inputs from PTI)