Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday accused Mamata Banerjee of hurting when terrorists are killed and opposing Operation Sindoor to “appease her Muslim vote bank”, continuing his party’s use of the military offensive as an electoral plank.

The Trinamool Congress said Shah’s remarks — which came in an address to BJP workers at the Netaji Indoor Stadium here — were unbecoming of his position and demanded his resignation over his failure to stop infiltration or terror attacks.

“Mamatadidi opposed Operation Sindoor to appease her Muslim vote bank. In doing so, she insulted this nation’s mothers and sisters,” Shah said.

“I have come here with a plea to the women of Bengal to make those opposed to Operation Sindoor understand the value of the sindoor (vermilion) in the next (Assembly) election.”

Mamata had on Thursday frowned on the choice of the name “Sindoor” for the military operation, saying it smacked of politics, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi lambasted her government for corruption at a rally in Alipurduar.

She had also accused Modi of trying to squeeze political advantage out of Operation Sindoor despite the Opposition, including her party, having shown the decency to eschew such tactics.

“Our Prime Minister Narendra Modi took stern measures against terror… but Mamatadidi has a problem with that. For her vote bank priorities, Mamatadidi has crossed the limits of (moral) descent,” Shah went on.

Shah added: “Mamatadidi was hurt in the stomach by the death of those terrorists… numerous terrorists were obliterated, and this seems to have troubled her.”

After Modi’s belligerence on Thursday, which had apparently taken Mamata by surprise, Shah’s upping of the ante on Sunday seemed aimed at perking up the BJP’s beleaguered Bengal unit ahead of next summer’s Assembly elections.

“When tourists from Bengal were killed because of their religion in Pahalgam, Mamatadidi remained quiet. But now she has problems with Operation Sindoor,” Shah continued.

“In 2026, Bengal’s mothers and sisters will teach them a fitting lesson for opposing Operation Sindoor.”

Shah brought up the communal unrest in pockets of Murshidabad in April and accused the Trinamool leadership of involvement in the violence, whichemerged amid protests against the waqf law amendments by the BJP-led central government.

“One could say the Murshidabad riots were state-sponsored,” Shah said.

“The Union home ministry kept insisting on BSF deployment during the riots but the TMC government here did not let it happen…. Had the BSF been deployed, Hindus would have been protected.”

Shah accused Mamata of having turned Bengal into a hub of infiltration, corruption, crimes against women, bomb blasts, and the ill-treatment of Hindus.

“The Bengal election will decide the future of the state… but it is also linked to national security, because Mamata Banerjee keeps Bengal’s borders open for Bangladeshis,” he said. “Only a BJP-led state government here can bring an end to that.”

Shah said the BSF was not getting the land it requires from the state government, and alleged that Mamata needs infiltration to thrive to remain in power.

He said he was confident that the BJP — which rose from 77 wins in the 2021 Assembly elections to 97 leads in the general election last year (from the 294 Assemblysegments in the state) — was already at the 40 per cent mark in vote share.

“We just need that bump of four-five per cent to form the government here,” he said.

In a symbolic gesture, Trinamool fielded three women — finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, Barasat MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Rajya Sabha member Sagarika Ghose — to return the fire before releasing a seven-point “fact-check” againstShah’s “lies”.

“Who is responsible for stopping infiltration? Who heads the BSF? You are substantiating your own incompetence. Amit Shah, you must resign,” Bhattacharya said.

“You didn’t even have any kind of intel regarding the Pahalgam attack. It is because of your gross negligence that 26 people lost their lives, and you are yet to catch the accused terrorists.”

She asked Shah to resign over his failure to stop infiltration. “You are yet to give a fitting response for the sindoor lost during the (2019) Pulwama attack. One after the other, such incidents keep happening on your watch,” Bhattacharya said.

Ghosh Dastidar scoffed at Shah’s “pipedream” about capturing power in Bengal: “Trinamool will come to power again, with over 250 seats now.”

Ghose said: “It is Amit Shah and gang who are the real deshdrohi (traitors to the nation), because they are weakening India with their political venom of division.”