Addressing booth-level TMC workers here, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said BJP should not ‘play its Hindu card’ with her as she chants Chandipath everyday before leaving home.
Launching her diatribe against BJP, Banerjee said she is a ‘Hindu’ and the BJP was trying to polarise Nandigram and recited hymns from religious texts during her address.
Without mentioning her former confidante and protege Suvendu Adhikari even once, she took a dig at him, saying, “People who had sold their souls to outsiders from Gujarat are insulting the Nandigram movement by playing the communal card. Some people are talking about 70:30 ratio (of HinduMuslim population). Those doing that are insulting the sacred Nandigram movement which people of both communities fought together. People of Nandigram will make BJP ‘April fool’ on 1 April when polling is held.”
She also came down heavily on being called an ‘outsider’ by Adhikari and other BJP leaders, a day ahead of filing her nomination from her seat. “I have heard some people are calling me an outsider in Nandigram. I am amazed. I was born and brought up in the neighbouring Birbhum district, and the person who is calling me an outsider was also not born here. Today I have become an outsider, and those coming from Gujarat have become insiders in Bengal,” she said.
Adhikari has often called himself “bhoomiputra” (son of the soil) while seeking to get back at the TMC supremo who has been targeting the BJP with the “party of outsiders” barb.
Making an emotive appeal to the people, Banerjee said, “I will never forget Nandigram, it is like my eyes. If you don’t want me to file nomination, I won’t. But if you consider me your daughter, then I will file my nomination.” She said she had made up her mind to contest either from Singur or Nandigram-the two cradles of the anti-land acquisition movement-that catapulted her to power in 2011.
In the end, she said that she has rented her house in Nandigram for a year and will keep coming every three months. “Later, I will stay on. I will keep my word”, she said adding, she would give offer puja at the local Shiva temple here on Maha Shivaratri before leaving for Kolkata to release her party’s manifesto on 11 March.