KOLKATA: PM Narendra Modi took his case on CAA and voter identity concerns to X hours after leaving Kolkata Saturday. He also targeted Trinamool Congress over the chaos at Salt Lake Stadium during Lionel Messi’s visit and infiltration from Bangladesh.At 6.25pm, Modi wrote that weather prevented him from addressing a planned rally in Nadia district: “There are other issues too, which I would have raised at Ranaghat, but because of the weather, I couldn’t join the rally in person.” On CAA, Modi posted: “I assure every Matua and Namasudra family that we will always serve them. They are not here at the mercy of TMC. They have the right to live in India with dignity thanks to the CAA, which our govt brought. We will do even more for the Matua and Namasudra communities once a BJP govt takes oath in Bengal.”Modi also targeted Trinamool over the Messi mess. “The people of West Bengal have endured a lot in recent years. The condition of West Bengal’s Nari Shakti is deeply distressing. A football-loving state like West Bengal was shamed courtesy the TMC. The recent incident has broken the hearts of so many football-loving youth,” he wrote. Accusing Trinamool of shielding infiltrators, he wrote: “Look at the extent of TMC’s affection for infiltrators – their supporters say ‘Modi Go Back’ but fall silent when it comes to saying ‘Infiltrators Go Back’.”Trinamool struck back swiftly. Rajya Sabha member Derek O’Brien said: “A migratory bird flew in today but did not reach his destination. Forgot his script. Tried to do late-night damage control. Hope he will do better next time.” He added that BJP had built the Ranaghat meeting as one where Modi would dispel Matua anxieties. “The PM could not reach there, but he did speak to them. He could not say anything concrete. So after Trinamool called out the facts, the PM is now in damage control mode. But now his X statements mean nothing during the SIR process.”TMC said Modi’s earlier “sile-nce on CAA” showed he had “come empty-handed, with no message to dispel SIR worries in the Matua heartland”, while Bengal BJP mounted a loud CAA pitch. The party also jabbed at his attempt to offset the “Bankim da” controversy, saying he had grasped that just as there can never be “a Gandhi da, Hedgewar da or Savarkar da, there can’t be a Bankim da”.
