Mamata dares Modi on Bangladeshi migrants issue

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Saturday dared BJP prime ministerial candidate, to implement his promise of sending Bangladeshi’s packing after 16 May if his party came to power, saying that the ‘paper tiger’ should first meet the ‘Royal Bengal Tiger’.

‘Touch a single person, we will see. The paper tiger should know there is a Royal Bengal tiger in Sunderbans. First you face that,’ Banerjee, the chief minister, told an election meeting here. Claiming that the Gujarat chief minister did not know history, she said that Bangladeshis came to India under a pact signed in 1971 by then prime minister Indira Gandhi and Bangladesh President Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.

‘He does not know that speaking in Bangla does not make one a Bangladeshi. Anyone who speaks in Bangla across India is branded a Bangladesh. This is discrimination,’ she said alleging that Modi wanted to to divide Bengalis and non-Bengalis.

At a rally in Serampore on Sunday, Modi had said that Bangladeshis should be ready to pack their bags after 16 May, the date of counting for the Lok Sabha elections.

She reiterated that one who did not follow secularism could not become the prime minister.

Banerjee also dismissed BJP President Rajanath Singh’s overture of a ‘handsome package’ to West Bengal if the NDA came to power, saying she did not want it, but interest on loans being deducted by the Centre should be returned.