Mamata Banerjee says pushed by 4-5 persons in Nandigram, leg swollen

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee sustained injuries in her leg after she was allegedly ‘pushed’ by some persons at Nandigram in East Midnapore, hours after she filed her nomination from the assembly constituency on Wednesday.

“I was deliberately pushed by 4-5 persons,” said Banerjee, who had to be carried by her security guard as she could not walk.

The TMC supremo who was supposed to stay in Nandigram and return to Kolkata on Thursday said that she would be coming back to Kolkata on Wednesday night itself.

"There were no police at the spot. Jan bujhke kiya (They did it deliberately). I am having chest pain," Banerjee said while sitting in her car.

Terming "no policemen around" remark by the CM as misleading, the BJP urged Banerjee to order inquiry into the incident.

“When Mamata goes on a padayatra there are at least 100 policemen behind her. I feel that this is an attempt to mislead the people. I have full sympathy for her. But she should not project it as if it was done by the opposition and try to garner sympathy. If she has the courage, she should order a CBI probe,” said Kailash Vijayvargiya, BJP’s national general secretary and West Bengal in-charge

BJP state spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya wished the CM a speedy recovery, adding there are always policemen and supporters around her.

"This is a big allegation. How can there be so much crowd around the chief minister? What was the district police doing? The district police have a fixed security plan for the CM. How can it?" said Tushar Talukdar, retired IPS officer and former police commissioner of Kolkata.

Earlier today, posters projecting Mamata Banerjee as an “outsider” surfaced in Nandigram. The posters with ‘Nandigram-Medinipur wants the son of the soil and not outsiders’ written on them in Bengali were put up in the assembly constituency.

Mamata Banerjee takes on her former aide Suvendu Adhikari, now in the BJP, in the Nandigram seat that will see voting on April 1.

Trying to project the chief minister as an outsider to Nandigram, Adhikari had said: “She [Mamata Banerjee]has fled from Singur. She has fled from Bhawanipore. The TMC candidate in Nandigram is an outsider. She comes to seek votes every five years. The people would reject her.”

Nandigram, along with Singur in Hooghly district, are two of the most prestigious assembly constituencies for the Trinamool because mass movements against land acquisition in these two constituencies during 2006-08 paved the path for Mamata Banerjees’s political resurrection.

While the TMC put up posters of Banerjee saying that Bengal wants its own daughter, the BJP put up posters in Adhikari’s favour saying that Nandigram wants its Bhoomiputra.

Adhikari earlier said that he would defeat Banerjee by at least 50,000 votes.