Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee on Sunday night lambasted the saffron regime’s “bulldozer politics”, saying the land of Tagore and Netaji could not be ruled through fear or force.

“Bulldozers cannot become the language of governance in a state built on culture, compassion, and resistance to oppression,” the former chief minister wrote on X.

“From homes to hawker stalls, the poor are paying the price of political arrogance. Bengal does not believe in bulldozer politics. The land of Tagore and Netaji cannot be ruled through fear, force, and demolition drives against ordinary citizens,” Mamata wrote in a blistering statement at 9.15pm.

The catalyst was the relentless “anti-encroachment” drive under the nascent BJP regime led by Suvendu Adhikari that left thousands stripped of shelter or livelihood in less than two weeks since the May 4 Assembly poll results in which the party won a brute majority of 207 seats. Mamata was left with 80 MLAs.

“What we are witnessing today is an attack on the dignity of the people of Bengal — daily wage workers, street vendors, small shopkeepers, and struggling families who have built their lives brick by brick. The massive eviction drive around Howrah Station, the unrest and anger erupting on the streets of Tiljala and Park Circus, and the growing desperation among those suddenly stripped of shelter and livelihood expose a government more obsessed with optics than humanity,” Mamata added in the statement, the timing of which was critical.

Her intervention came just hours after demolition drives fomented tension in Park Circus, not long after a situation off the Howrah Station.

“A government that demolishes first and listens later has forgotten the very spirit of Bengal. Real progress is measured by how a state treats its weakest citizens, not by how quickly it can erase them,” the former chief minister wrote.

Her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, who is the Trinamool Congress national general secretary, reshared her post on X.

While voices in the local administration — moving with a sudden, hyper-efficient alignment under the state’s new political masters at Nabanna — claim that these drives are merely “routine clean-up”, the images of iron-jawed machines leveling decades-old structures have given the poll-battered Mamata her first major post-verdict rallying cry.

While campaigning for the just-concluded Assembly elections, many in the BJP leadership had promised to import the Uttar Pradesh variant of the “bulldozer culture” in Bengal, if the BJP came to power in the state. Among them was Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, often called “Bulldozer Baba” by his followers.

Mamata, during her campaigns, had asserted that allowing the BJP to defeat her party would mean giving entry to that alien culture in the state — among the many things she had termed incongruous with the Bengal ethos.