West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Saturday hit out at the ruling TMC for its politics of "insiders and outsiders" and said it was creating suspicion about the state in the mind of fellow countrymen.
The TMC's "narrow politics" of asking people to resist outsiders is creating problems for the Bengalis working in other states, he claimed.
Ghosh questioned whether the TMC would be able to provide jobs and security for the lakhs of migrant Bengali labourers if they are called outsiders in the states they work in and are asked to return.
"Has the TMC started thinking that this region has become Paschim Bangladesh? Do we require visas to enter this region?" he said punning on the state's name Paschim Bangla (West Bengal).
"By doing this kind of insiders and outsiders politics, they [the TMC] are creating suspicion in the minds of countrymen about West Bengal, like there was about Kashmir. The TMC must rethink before saying such things. Or the 10 crore Bengali population will be insulted," Ghosh told reporters at the party headquarters here.
Stating that none in the other states where Bengali migrant labourers work call them outsiders, the BJP leader said, "But if it happens and they are asked to go back will the TMC be able to provide jobs to all of them when they return? Will it be able to provide them proper security?"
"Where is the TMC stooping down while trying to do politics? Bengalis were never such narrow-minded as this earlier," he said.
Continuing his tirade against the TMC, Ghosh said "Now even the PM, the union home minister have become outsiders. When the TMC leaders go to Jharkhand, Tripura, Assam or UP, does anybody call them outsiders?"
Without naming poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who has been tasked by the TMC to work out strategies by the party in view of the 2021 assembly election, he said that it is an "outsider" who is working for it.
"The TMC has urged people to restrict outsiders. But people from outside are coming and formulating the party's strategies as well as deciding on its leadership. We see that TMC partymen are reluctant to hear from the outsider," he added.
The BJP leader cited the examples of TMC MPs like K D Singh, Ahmed Hassan Imran and the Congress's Abhishek Manu Singhvi who are not from the state but got elected in the Rajya Sabha from it.
"Ahmed Hassan Imran was the founder of SIMI and is basically from Bangladesh. He came here from Assam and suddenly became a person from Bengal," Ghosh claimed.
The TMC, he said, was creating a division among the deities too. "Sri Ram has now become an outsider, while goddesses Kali and Durga are from Bengal. Those who are performing the Chhath Puja are outsiders. In India there was never this issue of outsider and insider".
On TMC leaders criticising him for his comments that if BJP comes to power in West Bengal it will strive to turn the state into Gujarat, Ghosh said that the saffron party is creating jobs and providing food for people of the entire country.
The BJP leader also hit out at the Left parties for cautioning people about BJP-ruled Gujarat by saying that it was a place of riots and asserted that most of the minorities from West Bengal work there.
"I will definitely turn West Bengal into Gujarat if the BJP wins. It is Gujarat which is providing food to the people of the country. Over a lakh of people from West Bengal are working there. There are no jobs here [West Bengal]."
"The Left parties had failed to open their account in the Lok Sabha elections. They made the workers of West Bengal migrant labourers and have themselves vanished," he mocked.
Ghosh said that Gujarat is economically better off than West Bengal.
Besides, Gujarat is in number one position in law and order and security for women. "But in West Bengal, there is lawlessness everywhere and women have zero security," Ghosh said.
