Top BJP leaders set for Bengal rallies

With BJP sensing an opportunity to corner the Trinamool Congress government over Malda violence, top party leaders, including its chief Amit Shah and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, are likely to hold public meetings starting next week in the poll-bound state.
Union ministers Nitin Gadkari and Smriti Irani besides Singh and Shah will be addressing these meetings starting from January 18, party sources said.
They are likely to harp about the "failure" of the Mamata Banerjee government's law and order machinery at Kaliachak in Malda, where over a lakh people had assembled last week over the alleged blasphemous remarks of a right wing leader and a section of it later turned violent.

While Gadkari is tentatively scheduled to hold a public meeting in South Dinajpur, which is close to Malda as the Malda administration denied permission to his rally there (Malda), on January 18.
Singh will hold a rally at Barasat in North 24 Parganas district on January 21, while Irani is likely to hold a rally in Burdwan on January 22 and Shah in Howrah on January 25, a party leader said.
BJP has accused the TMC government of taking "no" action against the organisers due to its "vote bank" politics, alleging that they stoked communal passions.

The party has stepped up its attack on it over the issue by first sending there a 'fact-finding' team and then meeting Union Home Minister yesterday after the team was not allowed to enter the area by the state government.

Demanding a high-level probe, BJP had said many participants in the rally had links with fake currency and narcotics trade and infiltration.
Accusing the Trinamool Congress government of "protecting criminals" involved in the incident of "anarchy and terror", a three-member team led by general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, who is also its Bengal in-charge, had met Singh.
Brushing off the TMC's charge that it was trying to communalise the situation due to the coming polls, BJP leader alleged it was the Mamata Banerjee government which was giving the issue a "communal" colour.
"It was an assembly of many anti-national people involved in drug and fake currency nexus. We will expose her government," the leader added.