Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday dubbed the BJP a “militant organiation” and accused it of doling out cash to win elections, saying such practices by it will soon be the reason for its downfall.

Who is Mamata Banerjee to give the BJP a “character certificate”

Addressing the extended core committee meeting of her Trinamool Congress, Banerjee alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party was engaged in diving the people on religious lines.

“We are not a militant organisation like the BJP. They are arrogant and intolerant. They are religiously biased. They don’t like Muslims, Christians, Sikhs – they are even differentiating between the upper caste and the lower caste Hindus,” she said.

Taking a veiled swipe at West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Dilip Ghosh for vowing to retaliate with bullets and carry out “encounters” if BJP workers are troubled, Banerjee dared the BJP to attack her party men.

“Some BJP leaders are threatening to carry out encounters. Some are talking about using guns and hurling bombs. They are even talking about finishing us off. I dare them to show their might. We have seen their capabilities during the Panchayat elections,” she thundered.

“Nothing can be achieved in politics at the point of a gun. You (BJP leaders) are talking about bombs and bullets because you are in power in Delhi now. Where will you go once you lose the power? People are getting ready to throw you off.”

Ghosh on Tuesday said the BJP was counting the bullets used on their party workers by the Trinamool Congress and vowed to pay them back in the same coin if the attacks did not stop.

“We are counting the bullets which killed our workers. The TMC leaders will either go to jail or there will be direct encounters. Violence will be countered with violence and bullets will be answered by bullets.

“We have not signed a bond where it is written that we will offer them sweets even if they beat us,” Ghosh told a public meeting in Jalpaiguri.

Reacting sharply to Mamata Banerjee’s utterances, the BJP said that she should resign from the post as the state has become a “hotbed of political killings”.

BJP’s general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, who is also the party’s in-charge in West Bengal, said, “Mamata (Banerjee) is the champion of appeasement politics and there is total anarchy and lawlessness in the state under her rule.”

Who is Mamata Banerjee to give the BJP a “character certificate”, he asked and said that the people of the state will “teach her a lesson” in the next election.

“Rather than casting aspersions, she should look at the fact that today the state has become a hotbed of political killings. She should step down on moral grounds,” Vijayvargiya said.

Echoing similar sentiments, senior BJP leader and Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi alleged that Mamata Banerjee-led TMC has become a “heaven for anarchists.”