Will visit Sandeshkhali after TMC win: Mamata Banerjee

New Delhi, May 21

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West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said she would visit Sandeshkhali soon after her party candidate Haji Nurul wins from Basirhat, the Lok Sabha constituency under which the area comes.

Basirhat is slated to go to the polls in the last phase on June 1. “If Haji wins then I will go to meet the people in Sandeskhali within a couple of days,” said Banerjee, who has not visited the island despite the massive controversy erupting there.

In February, Sandeshkhali — located on the borders of Sundarbans – came under the spotlight when a group of agitators, mostly women, held massive protest marches against the local Trinamool leader Sheikh Shahjahan, accusing him of land grabbing and sexual exploitation.

The issue subsequently took various turns and twists, triggering a massive political row between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP.

During her first visit today to the Basirhat constituency since the Sandeshkhali unrest, Mamata Banerjee said she was saddened by the plight of women in the area who fell prey to the BJP “manipulation”.

Banerjee, who was addressing an election rally at Sangrampur in Basirhat, said the BJP should not have played with the dignity of women in Sandeshkhali and added that the saffron camp’s conspiracy stood exposed in the wake of the revelations by BJP functionary Gangadhar Koyal.

“People would have never realised how the BJP had hatched the conspiracy had the videos not surfaced. The BJP should not play with the dignity of women,” Banerjee said, referring to the statement of Koyal, purportedly a BJP mandal president, who was recorded on a spy cam allegedly narrating how BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari instructed party functionaries to frame TMC leaders and get them arrested.

Accusing the PM of taking advantage of the Sandeshkhali controversy, Banerjee said the Modi government had the worst track record in terms of women’s safety and security.