INDIA bloc vs INDIA bloc? BJP leader takes a dig as Hemant Soren questions ’demographic change’ in TMC-ruled West Bengal

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Thursday denied the BJP’s charges that the state’s demography has changed. He said people in the state are living peacefully. “But these people [RSS, BJP] don’t like it when people live in peace…so don’t let them enter your villages,” the Jharkhand Chief Minister said.

Soren compared the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to rats, saying, “These people of RSS will enter society like rats and destroy it.” He also urged the people of Jharkhand to recognise “these forces and not let them enter villages.”

The Jharkhand CM dismissed the BJP’s allegations of demographic changes in Jharkhand, suggesting that critics should examine the demographic data of neighbouring West Bengal.

“Go and see what is Bengal’s data. Then see the data of various districts in Jharkhand. You would find no change in the demography here…,” Soren added. 

Soren also took a jibe at Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, and said, “…Assam CM comes to Jharkhand and criticises the state’s people and state government…We will give a befitting reply…”

“They talk about spoiling the demography and Bangladeshi intruders. I would like to tell them to go and get the data from the Centre and see in which district and in which state it has changed,” Soren said.

BJP hits back at INDIA bloc

BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla hit back at Soren over his “rat comment” and said the Jharkhand chief minister “has accepted that there has been a demographic change in West Bengal, which was ruled by the Left as well as Mamata Banerjee.”

“He [Soren] says that no demographic change has occurred in Jharkhand, it has happened in West Bengal. Who has had governments in West Bengal? Not BJP. Left, followed by the TMC,” said Poonawalla.

“It means that one party of INDI Alliance is targeting another party of the alliance. No mission, no vision, no common part, only ambition, their own confusion and their own corruption…,” Poonawalla said.

“Did he [Soren] attack them [TMC and Mamata Banerjee] inadvertently or was it deliberately, he only knows it,” the BJP leader said. He added that Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren calls nationalists and people elected by the public ‘chooha’.

BJP’s claim

Soren’s statement days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that infiltration from Bangladesh is “changing Jharkhand’s demography.” PM Modi said in Jamshedpur on September 15, “every Jharkhandi is feeling unsafe because of the infiltrators… The JMM is standing with Bangladeshis and Rohingyas…”

On Wednesday, BJP MP Ravi Kishan also accused the Jharkhand government of trying to change the demography of the state for political mileage.

Meanwhile, Himanta Biswa Sharma informed that the Assam government will bring out a white paper by April-May of next year on the demographic changes in the state. “We are bringing a white paper, how on polling booth level demography is changing in Assam so the people at large realise the challenges. Yesterday I told it in the Assam Assembly that by April or May, we are bringing a comprehensive white paper,” CM Sarma said.