Those calling me outsider are outsiders: Mamta

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New Delhi, Mar 09: With chants of “Jai Nandigram” and recitals of “Sanskrit shlokas”, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday launched her campaign to win Nandigram where she faces her aide-turned-rival and BJP heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari.
“If you don’t want me to file the nomination, I will not, but if you consider me your daughter, then I will move ahead with the filing of my nomination,” Mamata said at a rally of booth-level TMC workers in Nandigram a day before she files her poll papers.
Mamata, who faces a stiff challenge from Suvendu Adhikari, took a dig at her former aide and said: “I am an outsider for whom those coming from Gujarat are insiders.”
Adhikari had called himself “bhoomiputra” (son of the soil) and the chief minister an “outsider” in Nandigram, the day Mamata had announced she would contest the assembly elections from the key constituency.
“I have heard some people are calling me an outsider in Nandigram. I am amazed. I was born and brought up in the neighbouring Birbhum district, and the person who is calling me an outsider was also not born here. Today I have become an outsider, and those coming from Gujarat have become insiders in Bengal,” she said.
Making an emotive appeal to the people of the state, Mamata said: “I will never forget Nandigram, it is like my eyes.”
Without naming Adhikari even once, Banerjee said she had made up her mind to contest either from the Singur or Nandigram – the two cradles of the anti-land acquisition movement – that catapulted her to power in 2011.
Accusing Suvendu of trying to incite communal passions, Banerjee said, “Those who have sold their souls to the outsiders are insulting the Nandigram land acquisition movement by playing the communal card.”
“Some people are talking about 70:30 ratio (of Hindu-Muslim population). Those doing that are insulting the sacred Nandigram movement which people of both communities fought together. People of Nandigram will make BJP ‘April fool’ on April 1 when polling is held,” she asserted.