Amit Shah, Mamata Banerjee Trade Pre-Election Jabs Over SIR, Infiltration

Mamata Banerjee and Amit Shah traded allegations and snide remarks Tuesday in equal measure, ramping up campaign rhetoric before next year's Bengal election.

This was after Shah, in Bengal for a three-day visit to jumpstart his party's poll campaign, accused the Trinamool Congress boss of having engendered "fear, corruption, and misgovernance" over the 15 years she that has been in charge of the eastern state.

The senior BJP leader also ripped into Banerjee over the 'ghuspaithiya', or 'infiltration', issue – a topic on which the Trinamool has been repeatedly targeted, with the BJP claiming the party looks the other way when illegal foreign nationals cross over, in exchange for their votes. He claimed the Chief Minister had ignored seven letters for allotment of sufficient land – along the international border with Bangladesh – to the Border Security Force to deal with the issue.

"I want to assure you the BJP, under no circumstance, will have any understanding with that political party which encourages illegal infiltration and pampers infiltrators to protect their dedicated voter bank," Shah raged at a press conference this evening.

"Infiltration is an extremely serious issue… considering the demography in the state is changing because of the menace. Unless this is checked immediately, the suffering of the people of Bengal will increase manifold in the coming days," he declared.

In her typically combative style the Chief Minister responded by calling Amit Shah 'Dushasan' –the character in Hindu epic 'Mahabharat'– and criticised the Home Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party over the Special Intensive Revision, or re-verification, of the state's voter list, a contentious exercise and major flashpoint before polls in Bengal and Tamil Nadu next year.

She tore into 'Dushasan' and 'Duryodhan' – an epithet many saw as referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi – on the SIR, declaring "they are saying 1.5 crore voters will be deleted".

Mamata Banerjee also hit out over the rash of deaths during the SIR, specifically BLOs, or booth level officers, tasked with distributing and collecting enumeration forms. "Around 60 people died due to SIR. Elderly people are being called for document verification hearings… if even a single legitimate voter's name is deleted, we will gherao the Election Commission office…"

On the land allotment charge the Chief Minister hit back, "They are saying 'Mamata hasn't given land'! Who has done all the development work? We have. If I didn't give land, how would they extract coal in Bengal? We have given land. Only big talks and lies."

"Only Bengal has infiltrators? No infiltrators in Kashmir? I want to ask one question – then how did Pahalgam terror attack happen? How did Delhi blast happen?"