Mamata Banerjee: Centre imposing super emergency

Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday alleged that members of a Trinamool Congress delegation were "manhandled" by police at an Assam airport and accused the Centre of imposing "super emergency".

The Trinamool Congress supremo also claimed that the draft NRC published in Assam is the "central government's political vendetta to oust real Indians from the country".

Claiming that her party lawmakers had gone to Assam only to meet the "victims" whose names have been left out of the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) published on July 30, she wondered if stopping the delegation was part of the Bharatiya Janata Party's "vendetta to suppress the real facts in Assam".

"When I went to meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, he told me that no one will be harassed. And after that, a TMC parliamentary delegation comprising a Minister, one MLA and six MPs who went to meet the victims was not allowed to come out of the airport itself. Inside the airport, they were manhandled by Assam Police. Even female members were not spared," Banerjee said after returning here from Delhi this evening.

The Trinamool delegation were confined to a room at the Kumbhirgram airport in Silchar during the day on the ground that Section 144 of the CrPC was in force in Cachar district in Assam.

Some delegation members, including women, alleged that they were manhandled by the police at the airport.

"This is most unfortunate. I condemn the attitude. Our MPs had gone there to meet the common people there, nothing else. There was no public meeting. If everything (in Assam) is okay and peaceful, if there is no harassment, then why is the (Assam) government behaving rudely with the MPs? Is it their vendetta to suppress the real facts?" she questioned.

Banerjee claimed that the people in Assam are panicky over the NRC developments and said that the BJP-led central government is showing its muscle like a "super-emergency government".

Banerjee, who has been extremely critical of the draft NRC, also questioned the imposition of Section 144 of the CrPC in various Assam districts.

"If nothing is (wrong) there, then why has (Section) 144 of CrPC been imposed? Even if Section 144 has been imposed, two persons can move freely. We know the law. They cannot state under which law they were not allowed (to move)," she said.

Banerjee said: "This is the beginning of their end. They are frustrated, they are politically tensed. That's why they are only showing their muscle power."

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