NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday met Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury at his residence in Delhi and raised the issue of attacks on Bengali-speaking people, especially in BJP-ruled states.Chowdhury, a former West Bengal Congress chief, urged the Prime Minister’s intervention to help stop such attacks.He claimed that such incidents could flare up communal tension in the state.“Their only offence is that they speak the Bengali language, which is often misunderstood by the concerned administration as meaning they belong to neighbouring Bangladesh and are treated as infiltrators,” Chowdhury said in a letter to PM Modi.“It is ironical to note that administrative officers, including the police, do not differentiate between ‘Banglabhasi’ and ‘Bangladeshi’ people. Without committing any offence, they are lodged in jail or detention centres, resulting in grave injustice,” he added.The meeting comes as West Bengal gears up for the Assembly elections scheduled for May 2026.Chowdhury, however, played down the visit, claiming it was “not political”. Meanwhile, Union Minister Amit Shah, who is on a three-day visit to West Bengal, is scheduled to hold back-to-back closed-door meetings with the BJP’s MLAs and MPs, besides representatives in various civic bodies.He is also expected to meet the top brass of the RSS in the state.After his arrival on Monday, Shah held a meeting at the BJP office in Salt Lake to take stock of the party’s organisational preparedness for the upcoming polls.
