TMC releases Chargesheet against BJP ahead of West Bengal election As election fever heats up in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra raked a new debate comparing Bengalis and Gujaratis contribution in the war for independence. Addressing a presser where TMC leaders released a chargesheet against the BJP, Mahua Moitra said, "Bengalis are a very proud race. We led the war for independence against the British. Who were the Gujaratis?... 68 per cent of the names of the people who were killed and incarcerated in Kala Pani were Bengalis, followed by Punjabis. Can you name me one Gujarati who was there, apart from your big hero, Veer Savarkar, who only wanted to sit and write apology letters? Please let us know." In another statement, Moitra said, "You have declared every Bengali as a criminal, and you do it in four steps: first you insult us, then you deprive us, then you criminalise us, and then you harass us..." She also said, "The Enforcement Directorate reports to him, the ED has filed nearly 6,000 cases, 98 per cent against opposition leaders. You have convicted just 25 people, a rate of 0.42%..." Earlier today, Union Home Minister Amit Shah sharpened the BJP’s campaign pitch for the West Bengal assembly polls, releasing a “charge sheet” against the TMC government and framing the election as a battle not merely for Bengal, but for the country’s security. Launching a broadside against the Mamata Banerjee government at a press conference, Shah alleged that after 15 years of the TMC rule, West Bengal had become the country’s “principal corridor” for infiltration due to "TMC’s appeasement politics, corruption and political violence". In a state where Banerjee, the TMC supremo, has often capitalised her image of a besieged streetfighter, Shah sought to puncture that narrative first. “Mamata Didi has always played the politics of the victim card. Sometimes she talks about her injury, sometimes she abuses the Election Commission. But the people of Bengal now understand Mamata Didi's victim-card politics very well,” he said. Hitting out at Banerjee over her opposition to the Election Commission’s SIR exercise, Shah accused her of manufacturing outrage to protect the TMC’s “minority vote bank”. “The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has taken place in other states too, but nowhere has it been made such an issue. It has been made an issue in Bengal only because Mamata Banerjee wants to protect her vote bank. Abusing constitutional bodies like the Election Commission is not part of Bengali culture,” Shah said. Claiming that infiltration through Assam had “almost come to an end” after the BJP came to power there, he alleged that West Bengal has now emerged as the "last remaining route through which infiltrators enter India and disperse across states". “The Bengal election is important not only for Bengal but for the entire country. The security of the entire country is, in a way, linked to the Bengal election,” Shah said. He claimed that illegal immigration through the borders of West Bengal had become a matter of concern for national security. In one of his sharpest attacks, Shah said the security of the strategically crucial Siliguri corridor — the narrow strip linking the Northeast to the rest of India — was being endangered "because of the TMC government’s appeasement politics". “Due to appeasement and vote-bank politics of the TMC government, the security of the Siliguri corridor is being threatened,” he said.