West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee remarked on Friday that any proposal to divide the state would amount to dividing the country.
The chief minister made the comments a day after Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey had proposed in Parliament that certain parts of West Bengal and Jharkhand be made Union Territories to deal with undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh who have allegedly settled in the regions.
On Wednesday, West Bengal BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar had requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to incorporate northern parts of the state into the North East because the two regions have “many similarities”.
Majumdar, who is also Union minister of state, said that the prime minister will decide on the proposal.
On Friday, Banerjee objected to both statements and said: “When Parliament is in process, a minister is making statements to divide Bengal. And now from different sources, different party members are giving different types of statements – to divide Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, and Bengal. We strongly condemn this attitude. To divide Bengal means to divide our country India.”
Banerjee made the statement before leaving for Delhi to attend a meeting of the NITI Aayog.
The chief ministers of four Opposition-ruled states earlier said that they would boycott the meeting to protest against the allegedly discriminatory Union Budget presented on July 23.
However, Banerjee said that she will attend the meeting, slated for July 27, and protest “political discrimination being done with Bengal”, ANI reported.
“Bengal and other Opposition-ruled states were totally deprived in the Budget and were given step-motherly treatment,” the West Bengal chief minister alleged. “This discrimination and political bias will not be tolerated.”
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