At rally, Mamata calls BJP 'party of rioters'

Admitting that the relief doled out after Cyclone Amphan by her government might have missed out "one or two" beneficiaries, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said Bharatiya Janata Party leaders were nowhere to be seen during the crisis.

Addressing a rally in Paschim Medinipur, the Trinamool Congress supremo claimed that BJP leaders "arrive here in choppers and planes from outside with bagful of cash to lure voters and loot votes" just ahead of elections.

"Thousands of crores of rupees were doled out by the TMC government for the cyclone-affected. There could have been one or two exceptions... But we rushed to be on the side of people. Where were BJP leaders then? At the time of human miseries, they are always absent," she said.

Asserting that the TMC will never allow the National Population Register exercise in West Bengal, Banerjee alleged, "The BJP will omit names of voters if they are not found at home during the visit
of enumerators. They will just evict you (people). But we would not allow them to update the register here.

"Not a single member of any family, no citizen of the country can be evicted from Bengal," she stated.

National Population Register is a document containing names of the country's "usual residents".

Branding the BJP as "a party of rioters", she said, “We don't want violence, we don't want bloodshed, and we don't want the politics of retaliation to enter Bengal."