West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo, Mamata Banerjee once again lashed out at prime minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, alleging that the party, in consultation with the RSS, was trying to lure Hindu voters and create communal tensions in the state.

Her comments came just a day after the BJP announced Pragya Singh Thakur or Sadhvi Pragya, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blasts, as its candidate from the prestigious Bhopal constituency.

“The RSS has briefed the BJP that there are many Muslims in West Bengal and so the BJP can sway the Hindu voters in its favour. But it doesn’t happen like this in West Bengal. I will never let the BJP play the Hindu-Muslim game here or in India,” she said while campaigning for her party’s candidate in the Malda constituency in West Bengal, where the Muslim populace accounts for over 51 per cent of the district’s total population. In West Bengal, 27.1 per cent or 24.6 million people belong to the Muslim community.

The TMC is yet to win from Malda, which has historically been a Congress bastion. However, like other districts in the state, the BJP has started to make its presence felt here in recent times.

In 2016, communal riots broke out in Malda after Kamlesh Tiwari, who claimed to be a Hindu Mahasabha leader from Uttar Pradesh, allegedly made derogatory remarks against prophet Muhammad. Although the backlash from the minority community was first directed towards the police, it soon took up a communal character and led to the collapse of law and order.

In her public address, Mamata also asked the central forces deployed in this constituency to understand the ground realities of the area before taking any action.

“This (Malda) is a sensitive area. Please don’t do anything upon the insistence of the BJP,” she said.

Malda shares a 173-km long highly porous border with Bangladesh and several political parties in the state have raised the issues of immigration, cattle trade and poppy trade, which plague this area.

BJP sources, meanwhile, claimed that the party, in Bengal, has been able to take into confidence a large section of the Hindu populace from the border districts of the state. They alleged that Mamata’s appeasement policy with the Muslims hasn’t gone well with the Hindus.

Recently, TMC had also roped in Bangladeshi actor Ferdous Ahmed to woo voters in the North Dinajpur constituency in the state. Like Malda, the Muslims are a majority (49.92 per cent) in this bordering constituency with Bangladesh as well. After a day-long campaign, Ahmed’s business visa was cancelled and the actor was asked to leave India.

While seeking votes for her candidate, Mausam Noor, who recently crossed over to the TMC from Congress, Mamata said, “Modi has understood that he will not get any seats in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and will not bag more than 20 seats in Uttar Pradesh – Mayawati and Akhilesh (Yadav) will get most of the seats there. So, BJP leaders are visiting West Bengal to influence the voters”.

In the run up to the Lok Sabha elections, several top-shots from the BJP, including Modi, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, and several others, visited the state asking people for votes.

After Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, West Bengal sends the third largest number of Parliamentarians to the Lok Sabha.

Mamata further said that her party would play a decisive role in forming the government this time at the Centre.

With the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill becoming major poll issues in Bengal, Mamata has warned the BJP that she will not permit their implementation in West Bengal.