West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Thursday called the Bharatiya Janata Party a 'militant organisation' engaged in dividing people along religious lines and dared it to attack her party.
Banerjee, a known critic of the saffron party, also alleged that the BJP is manipulating electronic voting machines to increase its vote share in the state and urged her party workers to prepare for the next Lok Sabha poll as the entire country is looking forward to it.
"We are not a militant organisation like the BJP. They are arrogant and intolerant. They are religiously biased. They don't like Muslims, Christians, Sikhs -- they are even differentiating between the upper caste and the lower caste Hindus," she said at the extended core committee meeting of TMC.
Lashing out at the BJP, she said, "They are threatening to carry out encounters. Just because they are in power in Delhi, they are talking about hurling bombs. I dare them to come and touch us. We will show them their place."
West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh had said on Tuesday that the party would not tolerate if its workers were attacked by the Trinamool Congress and threatened to retaliate.
Banerjee accused the BJP, the Congress, the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the Maoists of joining hands against the TMC in Bengal and alleged that the saffron party is manipulating EVMs to increase its vote share in the state.
"The work for the revision of electoral rolls has begun. Ensure that the procedures are followed. It is the BJP's habit to tamper EVMs. Our party workers must be alert and monitor them," she said.
Referring to the May assembly by-poll at Maheshtala, she said 30 per cent of the EVMs used then did not work properly.
"This government (at the Centre) manipulates EVM machine. Every machine will have to be monitored," she said.
The TMC had registered a massive victory in Maheshtala by securing 1,04,818 votes, while the BJP's vote share had witnessed a massive rise to 42,053 votes.
Banerjee asked her party cadre and workers to increase mass contact ahead of the Lok Sabha poll due next year.
"You (TMC cadre and workers) should remember that people of this country are looking up to us. They want to know what are we doing," she said.
"You must reach out to the people. Or else there is no place for you in the party. The party will not tolerate those who are inactive," she added.
Hitting back, the BJP said that Banerjee should resign from the post as the state has become a 'hotbed of political killings'.
Senior BJP leaders accused the TMC supremo of being a 'champion of appeasement politics', and her party a 'heaven for anarchists'.
BJP's General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, who is also the party's in-charge in West Bengal, said, "Mamata (Banerjee) is the champion of appeasement politics and there is total anarchy and lawlessness in the state under her rule."
Who is Mamata Banerjee to give the BJP a 'character certificate', he asked and said that the people of the state will 'teach her a lesson' in the next election.
"Rather than casting aspersions, she should look at the fact that today the state has become a hotbed of political killings. She should step down on moral grounds," Vijayvargiya said.
He also said the language being used by Banerjee for her political opponents does not suit a person who holds a constitutional post.
Echoing similar sentiments, senior BJP leader and Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi alleged that Mamata Banerjee-led TMC has become a 'heaven for anarchists'.
"As a result there is no law and order in the state. It is in complete chaos. So first get your house in order then talk about others," he said.
