A day after declaring that she would contest the upcoming State Assembly election from Nandigram, Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday alleged BJP of putting pressure on Bengali media.

At a rally in Purulia on Tuesday, the West Bengal Chief Minister alleged that the saffron party’s central leadership was pressurising a Bengali news channel to alter their opinion poll numbers in favour of BJP.

“The media is showing more than what BJP has in Bengal. They changed the numbers of survey after getting direction from Amit Shah,” Banerjee alleged.

“Shah asked them to show that TMC would get 158 and BJP 92 seats. What kind of media is this? What kind of business is going on? I dare them to speak about Pulwama. I dare them to speak about riots,” she added.

The Trinamool Congress supremo attacked the media further and asked her supporters to not believe anything that’s being shown.

“If the media shows that TMC will get less seats, remember that we’ll come with four times more,” she said.

Banerjee was also seen taking a jibe at the purported social media posts of BJP’s IT-Cell. “They make fake videos. They have thousands of WhatsApp groups. Don’t believe in them,” exclaimed she.

Meanwhile, the attack on media came after a prominent media house in West Bengal allegedly delayed its opinion poll presentation.

Rumours had gone rife that the poll results showed Mamata Banerjee’s TMC would win a landslide victory in 2021 West Bengal Assembly Election and thus, BJP pressurised the channel to tweak the numbers.

Mamata Banerjee had claimed the same on Monday as well. At a rally in Nandigram, she had said that the channel was asked to the show that TMC would win 158 seats and BJP 102. Interestingly, the exit poll later gave the exact same figures.

In a remarkable turn of events on Monday, Mamata Banerjee announced she would contest the upcoming assembly election from Nandigram, taking the fight for West Bengal to the bastion of poitical heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, who recently quit the TMC and joined the BJP.

That Banerjee chose Nandigram to make the big announcement reflects the TMC supremo”s determination to take the BJP, which has launched a spirited campaign to unseat her after a decade-long stint in power, head on.

Nandigram was the scene of massive public protest against “forcible” land acquisition by the then Left Front government for creation of a special economic zone.