KOLKATA: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee took her anti-BJP stance to a new high on Friday, blaming a “Hindu terrorist outfit” for her scrapped Chicago tour on the 125anniversary celebrations of Swami Vivekananda’s historic speech at the Parliament of World’s Religions in 1893. The CM compared them with “terror outfit ISI”.“I don’t support this Hindu terrorist outfit. They are like Muslim terror outfit ISI. Why did they play this dirty game?” Banerjee said while speaking at ‘Rising Bengal: 2018’ programme organised by a Bengali news channel in Kolkata. She wondered why this organisation did this with her when the Chicago programme she was invited to was different from that of World Hindu Congress.“The ministry of external affairs has said I didn’t place any request for attending the programme. Why should I? The Vivekananda Vedanta Society had invited me to a separate commemorative programme in Chicago in April. The programme was scheduled on August 26. They came under so much threat that they had to cancel the programme. They wrote to me in June that the programme has been cancelled due to some unforeseen situation. Just imagine the level of threat. I call them Hindu terrorist organisation like Muslim terrorist outfit ISI,” Banerjee said, showing a copy of the letter from Vivekananda Vedanta Society to the audience.When the television anchor asked her to elaborate on the “threat”, the CM said: “Can you guarantee security of the monks from these outfits abroad? I will say only if you can do that. I have members of my family abroad. It can also affect my family.”When the anchor reminded Banerjee about her programme at St Stephen’s College that was cancelled at the last moment, she said: “They go and threaten organisers wherever I am invited. The BJP government is after our leaders. They put our Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay behind bars though he doesn’t have a hand in the Ponzi scam. I also have cases against them, including charges of child trafficking. But I didn’t do anything out of political courtesy.” The CM added that the present BJP government was adopting a “divide and rule” policy.Banerjee then hit out at PM Narendra Modi , saying that he was playing a “good-Muslim-bad-Muslim” policy. “When the Prime Minister meets Shia Muslims, they become good. Or when he addresses Bohra Muslims at Indore, they are good. All others are bad. This can’t go on,” she said.Her comment was in response to the NRC exercise in Assam. Banerjee lost her cool when the TV anchor wanted to know her stand on NRC. “Why are you parroting BJP’s views. Am I giving protection to illegal immigrants? Forty lakh people have been left out of the NRC final draft in Assam. Of them, 20 lakh people are Hindus. We want the government not to exclude a genuine citizen,” the CM said. She held that the 2019 Lok Sabha polls will turn into a “people’s referendum” where commoners will not think twice of voting BJP out of power.

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