Mamata Banerjee is the greatest invention of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s leader Mohammed Salim said today as he, along with BJP MP Roopa Ganguly, launched a strident attack on the TMC-led West Bengal

government.

 

Mamata asked the RSS to lend her support in order to oust the Left parties in West Bengal, Salim said as a justification for his allegation.

 

Salim was speaking at the India Today Conclave East 2018 where he was part of a debate titled ‘Bengal Tiger and 2019: Will it Roar’. Bharatiya Janata Party MP Roopa Ganguly was also part of the session.

Most of the session was focussed on the Mamata Banerjee government, with Salim and Ganguly differing on only one aspect — that of whether the BJP was responsible for polarising West Bengal on religious lines.

 

Mohammed Salim felt that the BJP indeed was to blame for politicising religion while Roopa Ganguly, expectedly, said it did not.

 

The topic of religious polarisation featured both Salim and Ganguly talk about religious procession being taken out on the streets of Bengal and the role they played in fanning communal violence.

 

“Bengal has always seen religious processions. But the polarisation has started under Mamata Banerjee’s rule. She is responsible for law and order problems in the state,” Roopa Ganguly said.

 

Mohammed Salim agreed that politicisation of religion had happened under Mamata but added that PM Narendra Modi too was to blame. “Politicisation of religion happened after Modi and Mamata came to power,” he said.

 

Roopa Ganguly also criticised Mamata Banerjee for “harming West Bengal to the core” and said that under her chief ministership democracy has been destroyed in the state.