Amit Shah broke his silence on Mamata’s alleged attack; Read the full statement here

Breaking his silence on the “attack” on chief minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram, Union home minister Amit Shah said the Election Commission in its report on the incident held that it was not an attack.

“Didi (Banerjee) had a leg injury. Trinamool says it was an attack. The EC says it was not an attack, it was an accident. God knows who is right. Didi, you are hurt because of the injury. Have you ever felt the pain of the mothers who lost their sons in TMC’s political violence?” Shah said at a public meeting held in Bankura’s Ranibandh.

“Didi, you are moving in a wheelchair. I would pray to God wishing for your fast recovery. But I would have been happy if you felt for the mothers, sisters and widows of the 130 BJP activists killed in your regime,” the Union minister further said.
Banerjee’s leg injury also figured in Shah’s virtual speech in Jhargram on Monday. “My helicopter developed a snag but I won’t call it a conspiracy,” he told the Jhargram gathering from Kharagpur, taking a dig at Trinamool’s “conspiracy” theory on the Nandigram incident.

Shah dropped the Jhargram rally, the first stop on his Bengal visit, prompting Trinamool to claim the “snag” was actually a case of poor turnout. Trinamool kept uploading pictures of the thin crowd in Jhargram.

Later, Shah in his tweet, along with an image of the crowd, wrote: “I thank you all for turning out in such large numbers. Let Jhargram be the harbinger of change and usher ‘ashol paribartan’.”

The home minister’s chopper was scheduled to reach the Jhargram Rajbari helipad at 10.45am. Accordingly, BJP’s Jhargram candidate Sukhamoy Satpathi made it to the rally venue at Jamda Circus Maidan, where SP Indira Mukherjee was on duty.

Satpathi started announcing that BJP supporters were being “prevented” from entering the ground on the excuse of “security checking”. The BJP leader then rushed to the checking point, where party supporters had a spat with police on duty. “Our supporters coming in vehicles have been stopped 5km from the rally spot,” said Bengal BJP leader Tushar Mukherjee. Shah announced a host of promises for Adivasis and OBCs of Jangalmahal in his virtual address.

The home minister was to launch the Birsa Munda yatra from Jhargram, an important rural Bengal constituency, in memory of the Adivasi icon and other freedom fighters such as Sarda Prasad Kisku and poet Pandit Raghunath Murmu. Jhargram goes to the polls on March 27.

At Ranibandh in Bankura, Shah wove his speech around the development of Jangalmahal — first drinking water project for Bankura, implementing Forest Rights Act for residents of forest hamlets, Eklavya schools setting up a commission to look into contractual teachers’ salaries — and a promise to do away with Trinamool’s “appeasement”.

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