A day before Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to Durgapur, Mamata Banerjee on Thursday tore into the saffron camp over the recent instances of alleged ill-treatment meted out to Bengali-speaking Indians in BJP-ruled states and questioned the common sense of those claiming that the Rohingya are Bengali-speaking.

At a state government event in New Town, the Bengal chief minister and Trinamool supremo attacked the saffron regime over its alleged Bengali-phobia and accused it of trying to get deportation notices issued to Bengali-speaking Indians. She had raised these issues at a rally specifically on this issue on Wednesday.

“A notification is being issued secretly, saying ‘if they speak Bengali, deport them’. Why? They don’t have the slightest idea that the number of people who speak Bengali is the second-highest in Asia, and fifth-highest in the world,” Mamata said, wondering how in India under the saffron regime was it becoming a problem for Indian citizens of one state to live and work freely in another simply because of the language they speak.

Her Thursday rant followed claims by BJP's Suvendu Adhikari, who made several unproven claims with communal overtones on Wednesday, including how all Bengali-speakers need not be Bengali and that millions of the Rohingya were enrolled as voters in Bengal.

“Whenever they speak Bengali, they are labelled as Bangladeshis and even Rohingya. Where are the Rohingya from? They are a people from Myanmar. Where would they learn Bengali (with mother tongue ease) from? Those who say such things lack elementary understanding,” Mamata said.

The Rohingya are a currently stateless Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who predominantly follow Islam, originally from the Rakhine state of Myanmar. They speak Rohingya, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Bengali–Assamese branch, closely related to the Chittagonian dialect of Bangladesh.

“Someone is saying there are 1.7 million Rohingya.... I ask them, give me their addresses, give me evidence. Tell us where they are,” Mamata said.

The Trinamool chief is showing clear signs of making the saffron camp’s alleged prejudice against Bengal and Bengalis a major poll plank for the 2026 Assembly election. At her party’s biggest annual occasion, the July 21 Martyrs’ Day event at Esplanade, she is likely to announce a major political roadmap to corner the saffron ecosystem on this.

On Thursday, Mamata recalled Partition and 1971 history to delve into Bengal's refugee crisis and explained how countless Bengali Indians speak dialects associated with what is now Bangladesh.

She also referred obliquely to the shelter being provided by the Modi government to ousted Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina, before demanding answers on how it plans to delete from the electoral roll millions of citizens simply because they are unlikely to vote the BJP.

“If you want to do politics, you have to first fix your mindset. Remember, politicians run the government. If they are not politically correct, they cannot ever be good administrators. If you want to run the government, you have to use your head. Your head should not be a barren desert,” said Mamata.

On Friday, Modi is likely to fan the flames of the raging issue in his speech at a rally in Durgapur.

Bengal BJP Samik Bhattacharya was predictably critical of Mamata. “Whatever narrative the chief minister has been trying to pitch has had no impact on the people of Bengal. Those working in other states are panicking over the chief minister’s speeches. Please ask her to publish a list of these so-called migrant workers being allegedly harassed,” he said. “The way Trinamool is trying to promote a narrative of linguistic provincialism, it will put yet another nail in the coffin of Bengali existence,” he added.