Shah's rally to expose Mamata's U-turn on NRC: BJP

Ahead of BJP president Amit Shah's rally in Kolkata on August 11, the party's youth wing chief Poonam Mahajan said it was aimed at "exposing" West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's "U-turn" on the NRC issue.

The Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) is organising the rally, where Shah will be the chief guest, she told reporters here.

Mahajan said Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief, had once expressed concern in Parliament over the presence of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in West Bengal during the Left rule in the state.

She said she would rather call Banerjee "U-turn didi" and not Mamata didi because of her about turn on the burning issue.

"We will expose her," Mahajan said.

The BJP and the TMC, led by their respective presidents, have been engaged in a bitter war of words over the issue of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, with Banerjee accusing the saffron party of pushing the country towards a "civil war and bloodbath".

Shah has described the issue as one involving national security and asserted that the NRC will be implemented in Assam to the last full stop and comma.

West Bengal BJP leaders have demanded a similar NRC in the state, claiming that the presence of illegal immigrants there is at a much larger scale.

The saffron party views the issue as a potential vote grabber in West Bengal, where Shah has set a target of winning 22 of the 42 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The BJP currently has two Lok Sabha MPs from West Bengal.