Kolkata: A political slugfest broke out between West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma on social media on Saturday with the two chief ministers accusing each other of engaging in divisive and appeasement politics.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. (File Photos)
“This divisive agenda of the BJP in Assam has crossed all limits and people of Assam will fight back. I stand with every fearless citizen who is fighting for the dignity of their language and identity, and their democratic rights,” Banerjee wrote on X.
This comes just a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal had created an ecosystem to shield infiltrators for political reasons. Modi was countering allegations by the TMC that Bengali-speaking migrant workers were being falsely tagged as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states.
“The second most spoken language in the country, Bangla, is also the second most spoken language of Assam. To threaten citizens, who want to coexist peacefully respecting all languages and religions, with persecution for upholding their own mother tongue is discriminatory and unconstitutional,” Banerjee wrote on X.
On Wednesday, the TMC supremo led a huge rally in Kolkata against the detention of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in various BJP-ruled states.
In just around 30 minutes after Banerjee’s social media post, Sarma hit back saying that while his government was acting decisively to preserve Assam’s identity, the TMC-government in West Bengal has compromised Bengal’s future by encouraging illegal encroachment by a particular community, appeasing one community for vote banks, and remaining silent as border infiltration eats away at national integrity.
“Didi (Mamata Banerjee), let me remind you—In Assam, we are not fighting our own people. We are fearlessly resisting the ongoing, unchecked Muslim infiltration from across the border, which has already caused an alarming demographic shift. In several districts, Hindus are now on the verge of becoming a minority in their own land,” Sarma wrote on X.
On July 14, the TMC lodged a police complaint at Mathabhanga in Cooch Behar district against Sarma, alleging that he was targeting Bengali-speaking people in his state.
“We do not divide people by language or religion. Assamese, Bangla, Bodo, Hindi—all languages and communities have coexisted here. But no civilisation can survive if it refuses to protect its borders and its cultural foundation,” Sarma wrote.
Comments
0 comment