We will send BJP to detention camps after 2026 Bengal polls, claims Abhishek

TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee on Monday, 21 July, tore into the BJP, branding it a 'Bangla-Birodhi' party, alleging that it wants to send Bengalis to detention camps.

He also claimed that after the 2026 Bengal Assembly polls, it is the BJP that will be electorally "sent to detention camps and wiped out" from the state.

“The BJP wants to take Bengalis to detention camps. I want to tell them clearly — after the 2026 elections, it is you whom we will send to the detention camps,” the TMC national general secretary said, addressing the TMC’s Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata.

Claiming that the BJP is a “Bangla-Birodhi party” (anti-Bengal party), Banerjee alleged that it has consistently targeted Bengalis for speaking their mother tongue.

“Just because we speak Bengali, we are being targeted. Why doesn’t the BJP take action against Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for his continuous attacks on the Bengali language? It shows their true colours,” he asked.

Banerjee said that if required, TMC MPs would speak in Bengali in Parliament in the ongoing session.

“Let the BJP try to stop us. If needed, we will speak in Bengali inside Parliament during this session and see if they dare silence our voice,” he said.

“They won 77 seats last time. In 2026, we will bring them down and wipe them out electorally. From Diamond Harbour, I had predicted they would be reduced to under 50 seats, mark my words, it will happen," Banerjee said at the rally.

The Diamond Harbour MP claimed that he does not go by predictions but by people's voices.

“I don’t make predictions. I analyse. I trust the people of Bengal and their sentiments. And this (central) government is torturing people,” he alleged.

Banerjee quipped, "Earlier they used to say ‘Jai Shri Ram’, now they are saying ‘Jai Ma Durga’, ‘Jai Ma Kali’. Mark my words, in ten months, they will start saying ‘Joy Bangla’."

He credited chief minister Mamata Banerjee for first branding the BJP as 'Bangla-Birodhi' (anti-Bengal).

“This was not a political slogan, it is the truth for the BJP,” he added.

Sharpening her 'Bengali asmita' (pride) pitch ahead of the 2026 West Bengal assembly polls, chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday accused the BJP of unleashing "linguistic terrorism" on Bengalis, asserting that the fight for identity and language will continue till the saffron party is defeated, both in the state and at the Centre.

If linguistic profiling doesn't stop, the resistance movement will reach Delhi, she asserted.

Addressing the TMC Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata, Banerjee gave a clarion call to defeat the saffron party in the 2026 polls and eventually oust the BJP from power at the Centre.

"There will be a language movement against the BJP's terrorism on the Bengali language... From 27 July, the language movement will start in West Bengal in protest against attacks on Bengalis," Banerjee thundered before a massive turnout at the rally venue in central Kolkata.

"We have to win more seats in the 2026 assembly polls, and then march to Delhi to defeat the BJP," she asserted.

Banerjee's fierce speech touched upon a wide range of issues from NRC notices in West Bengal to the "targeting" of Bengalis in BJP-ruled states, including allegedly putting them in detention camps and attempts to remove their names from electoral rolls.