The BJP on Friday launched an all-round attack at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for being “anti-national” and claimed it will gather over two lakh people for a rally in Kolkata on August 11 where party President Amit Shah will signal the “beginning of the end for Trinamool Congress”.

Addressing a press conference here, party MP and President of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) Poonam Mahajan said, “We will gather at Mayo Road from where the TMC began its political journey. Our Party President will be there to terminate this journey that is now being steered by an anti-national and utterly irresponsible leader.” BJYM is organising the rally.

Mahajan said the rally is aimed at “exposing” Mamata Banerjee’s “U-turn” on the NRC issue. The BJP has been highlighting the marked difference between Banerjee’s position on Bangladeshi migrants in the past and now when she has dubbed the publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), from which 40.07 lakh applicants have been left out, as provocation for “civil war and bloodbath” in the country.

Banerjee had stated in the Lok Sabha on August 4, 2005 that “the infiltration in Bengal has become a disaster now. You can see the Bangladeshi as well as the Indian names in the list. I have both the Bangladeshi and the Indian voters list. This is a very serious matter. I would like to know when would it be discussed in the House?”

The BJP and the TMC, led by their respective presidents, have been engaged in a bitter war of words over the issue of the NRC in Assam, with Banerjee accusing the saffron party of pushing the country towards a “civil war and bloodbath”.

Shah has described the issue as one involving national security and asserted that the NRC will be implemented in Assam to the last full stop and comma. West Bengal BJP leaders have demanded a similar NRC in the State, claiming that the presence of illegal immigrants there is at a much larger scale.

The saffron party views the issue as a potential vote grabber in West Bengal, where Shah has set a target of winning 22 of the 42 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Currently, the BJP has two Lok Sabha MPs from West Bengal.

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