Kolkata: Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamatha Banerjee to his home constituency Varanasi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing in an election rally on Saturday, he said that there is a ship that goes a ship from Haldia to Varanasi.

He also alleged that “Didi is now looking for a place outside West Bengal. Welcome to Varanasi. One more thing, the people of my Banaras, they are so large hearted they won’t call you a tourist or outsider. They are as large hearted as the people of Bengal,” Modi said. He also suggested to Mamatha Banerjee that “you will find a lot of people with tilak, saying Jai Shri Ram in Varanasi. Didi, then what will happen to you? Who will you be angry with?” Modi said, adding, “Don’t be angry with the people of Banaras. They will live with you. They will not let you go to Delhi. They will keep you there itself”.

Modi responded the comment of TMC leaders called BJP as “outsider” party. The TMC Chief Mamatha Banerjee in her attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often warned that the BJP would “destroy the culture of Bengal”. The Trinamool had also said Ms Banerjee would contest the next general election from Varanasi, in reply to PM Modi asking whether she would fight from another seat, apart from Nandigram, due to “insecurity” in the Bengal election. Even at a rally in North 24 Parganas on Saturday, she took a swipe over the “outsider” tag that her party has pinned on the BJP. “BJP wants to divide Bengal.

These people want to end Bengal, its language, its culture,” Ms Banerjee, on a wheelchair nursing her plastered leg, said. “I request to all the minority brothers and sisters not to allow their vote division,” she said. PM Modi won the Lok Sabha election twice from Varanasi in 2014 and 2019.