Mamata Banerjee following politics of repression, appeasement: BJP

New Delhi: Accusing West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of following politics of repression and appeasement, the BJP on Wednesday said innocent citizens are being targeted and compelled to flee.

"There is a clear conspiracy by the ruling TMC (Trinamool Congress) to terrorise a section of the society of the area, to chase them out, and to attack and batter into silence supporters and workers of opposite political parties," Bharatiya Janata Party Spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said at a press conference here.

Lekhi was part of the three-member delegation, formed by party President Amit Shah, which was stopped en route to the troubled area in North 24 Parganas`s Basirhat. The BJP leaders were detained by police. 

"The politics of repression and appeasement is being followed by Mamata Banerjee. TMC unleashed a cycle of violence in the state in which innocent citizens are being targeted with their homes and hearths being destroyed, their shops and markets gutted, their places of worship vandalised, compelling them to flee," she said.

Violence erupted between two communities at Baduria on the night of July 3 over a Facebook post by a youth.

Lekhi said the recent event at Basirhat was the latest in a series of incidents of violence in which the ruling TMC and its leaders are complicit. 

"The TMC leaders have abetted, ignored or actively fanned the flames of violence. Basirhat is not an isolated incident, it is the latest in a series of such violent mob attacks that have taken place, in regular intervals over the last two years and the list is getting longer by the day. 

"From the Kharagarh blasts in Burdwan in 2014, to the Nadia clashes in 2015, to Kaliachak and Dhulagarh in 2016 to Basirhat in 2017, a pall of violence and of repression has descended across the state of West Bengal and in all of these conflagrations the connivance of the ruling dispensation in the state and of its leaders is clearly visible," she said.

Slamming Banerjee for dragging central forces into the controversy, Lekhi said that the Chief Minister asked for deployment of central forces and later refused when they arrived.

"It is deplorable that she even chose to drag our central law enforcing and others agencies into her politics by blaming them for the situation in Basirhat while it is a clear case of the state government`s ineptitude, its inability to enforce law and order that points to a complete collapse of governance in various regions of the state," she said.