Trinamul Youth Congress president Abhishek Banerjee on Saturday said that Mamata Banerjee is the only woman chief minister in the whole country and the BJP is bringing its leaders from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to oust the only woman chief minister.

While addressing nearly lakhs of Trinamul Congress supporters and workers at Kulpi in South 24 Parganas, he said: “Your main aim should be to drive these outsiders out of Bengal and restore Mamata Banerjee’s government for the third time.” He added there is no doubt that Mamata will come to power with more than 250 seats and her government will last for at least 50 more years.

Abhishek challenged the BJP to bloom lotus in of the booths of South 24 Parganas and said: “I challenge the BJP that the Trinamul Congress will gain all 31 seats of South 24 Parganas.”

People from three Assembly segments — Kulpi, Mandir Bazar and Raidighi attended the meeting at Kulpi. Abhishek said: “The BJP leaders are claiming to build Sonar Bangla but they should start with BJP-run states like Sonar UP, Sonar MP, Sonar Uttarakhand and Sonar Haryana before dreaming of Sonar Bangla.”

He added: “The Trinamul Congress is a grassroot party and its main strength is its workers and supporters. The BJP may help some MPs and MLAs to defect from the Trinamul, but it hardly matters. We have seen that the party has become more unified after the defectors left the TMC.”

Without naming Dinesh Trivedi who resigned as Rajya Sabha MP on Friday, Abhishek said: “Some feel suffocated in our party. Don’t worry, people will suffocate you in the coming polls.” He urged the people to fight unitedly to give a befitting reply to the Mir Zafar and his gang of betrayers.

He dared Union home minister Amit Shah to name him in his allegations. “But Mr Shah is afraid of naming me and I’m enjoying that,” he said.

After the rally at Kulpi Abhishek took part in a massive road show from Kamalgachi to Sonarpur. Thousands of party workers and supporters thronged the road to greet him.

The workers were carrying flags and balloons with colours of their party flag as Abhishek passed through the crowd in an open van. Claiming that it would take 10 years to complete the Covid-19 vaccination process in the country, Banerjee further accused Amit Shah of misleading members of the Matua community on providing citizenship to them. (with PTI inputs)