Mamata says TMC leaders manhandled at Silchar airport, calls it 'super emergency'

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Thursday claimed that members of the TMC delegation, including women, who went to Silchar amid the Assam-NRC issue, were manhandled at the airport there and accused the BJP of imposing "super emergency" in the country.

The BJP was exposed by this incident, she said and sought to know under which law was the TMC delegation stopped at the Silchar airport.

Arriving here from Delhi, where she met a number of opposition leaders, Banerjee told reporters that when she met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the NRC issue he had assured her that no one would be harassed.

"But the TMC delegates have not been allowed to go out of the (Silchar) airport. They have been manhandled. Even women members have not been spared," she claimed.

"There is super emergency in the country. The BJP is politically exposed. They (BJP) are showing muscle power. They are suppressing facts. If there is peace (in Assam), why did they impose prohibitory order? The people of Assam are in panic," the West Bengal Chief Minister said.

Banerjee said that the TMC leaders had gone to Assam to meet the common people because the names of 40 lakh residents were not in the NRC final draft which was published on July 30.

BJP leaders had gone to Asansol in April after communal tension there over Ramnavami procession disregarding prohibitory order clamped in the area.

"But we (WB government) had allowed them. We had shown courtesy," she said. Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, TMC MP and a member of the team claimed that the police stopped them at the airport saying that their visit might create trouble and manhandled them.