Kolkata: A special aircraft with Union home minister Amit Shah on board was forced to hover over the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International (NSCBI) Airport in Kolkata for nearly 90 minutes after midnight on Saturday after a thunderstorm struck the city and surroundings.
The aircraft finally landed around 1.46 am after which Shah left for a hotel, where he was received by senior BJP leaders.
Airport sources said that the aircraft carrying the home minister from Delhi was scheduled to land at 11.46 pm. However, the plane was forced to hover over the airspace of the neighbouring Nadia and North 24-Parganas districts as a ‘nor’wester’ triggered lightning and heavy rain, Hindustan Times reported.
Earlier, on March 26, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s flight from Andal met with the same predicament. Her aircraft was unable to land at the Kolkata airport for an hour due to a thunderstorm before weather conditions improved.
On Saturday afternoon, Shah released what the BJP called a ‘charge sheet’ against the Trinamool Congress government in Kolkata. This document is a compilation of the BJP’s allegations against the TMC ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal.
Shah accused Mamata of playing the “victim card” in politics while releasing the document
. Accusing her of playing the victim during elections, he said that the people of the state have now understood her tactics.
West Bengal will go to the polls in two phases on April 23 and April 29, with counting of votes for both phases scheduled for May 4.
Shah later addressed a press conference and said: “Mamata Banerjee has always played the politics of the victim card. At times, she gets her leg broken; at other times, she has her head bandaged; sometimes she falls ill; and then again, she stands before the Election Commission feigning helplessness while hurling abuses at the institution. But I have come to tell her that the people of Bengal have now thoroughly understood this politics of the victim card…”
The Union home minister also pointed out that it was only in Bengal were judicial officers had to be deployed during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a situation not seen anywhere else in the country. The BJP would not only remove infiltrators from the voter list but also expel them from the country, he said, as reported by ANI.
“SIR is happening across the entire country, yet nowhere else did judicial officers have to be deployed – only in Bengal. What is the reason for this?… Mamata Banerjee should answer this to the people of Bengal… She is levelling allegations against SIR; however, today I wish to ask the people of Bengal: should those infiltrators who have been kept here be allowed to decide the future of Bengal?… I want to make it clear on behalf of the BJP that we are resolved to identify and expel every single infiltrator from the country, not merely from the voter lists but from across the entire nation, and this is my party’s agenda,” he said.