The Trinamool Congress on Friday described as sacrilege the BJP’s use of an image of goddess Kali next to his at Samik Bhattacharya’s anointment as the party’s state president and smelt a bid by the saffron camp to project the Prime Minister as a “divine avatar”.

Trinamool issued a statement on X, while several senior leaders took to social and mainstream media to lambaste the saffron ecosystem and Modi over this latest “faux pas”.

“PM @narendramodi’s internal monologue these days: “Kabhi Kabhi Lagta Hai Ki Apun Hi Bhagwan Hai (Sometimes I feel like I am God),” wrote chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s party.

“From declaring himself a “non-biological messenger of God”, to @sambitswaraj claiming Lord Jagannath is Modi ji’s devotee, and now, @BJP4Bengal placing Modi’s photo beside Maa Kali on their event backdrop, @BJP4India has indulged in one SACRILEGIOUS act after another,” it added.

Trinamool was referring to a large image of Kalighat’s goddess Kali taking centrestage at the Thursday event in Science City, where Bhattacharya took charge as the new state unit chief of the BJP. A large picture of Kali was placed in front of the giant dais, while the deity’s image was repeatedly displayed on the giant screen behind the stage — between the images of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Modi. Multiple sources said that the appearance of Kalighat’s Kali should not be taken lightly, as there was a clear strategy behind invoking the deity ahead of the Assembly election next year.

“This is BLASPHEMY. This is REPULSIVE SELF-GLORIFICATION. If appropriating Gods, hijacking faith, and projecting Modi as a divine avatar is BJP’s roadmap for 2026, they’re dangerously disconnected from ground reality,” Trinamool said in its Friday statement.

“We, in Bengal, worship Maa Kali, not some vote-hungry narcissists in masks of piety,” it added.

The saffron ecosystem’s go-to deity for all things Hindutva has for decades been Ram — the principal protagonist of the mythological epic, the Ramayan — deemed by some sections of Hinduism to be a major deity, being the seventh avatar of Vishnu from the holy trinity of the religion.

But neither Ram nor his foremost devotee and companion-in-chief Hanuman are traditionally revered deities in Bengal, with the vast majority of Bengali Hindus worshipping for millennia various forms of the mother goddess, such as Durga and Kali, or Vishnu’s eighth avatar, Krishna.

“But the images on the screen, with the goddess next to Modiji, was perhaps best avoided. It has given Trinamool a political opportunity to criticise us over our Bengal-Bengali connect, which is a sore, weak spot for us,” said a BJP insider.

On Thursday, when Bhattacharya was asked whether there was any political motive behind placing the deity on the dais, he had denied it, claiming that the choice was made because everyone in the country loves to visit Kalighat. On Friday, he couldn’t be contacted for comment on this matter.

The BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya, although without a direct response to the allegations, took to X with the same picture of the dais to claim his party’s Bengal connect.

“In the days to come, we will reclaim Bengal’s true identity, rooted in Maa Kali, Maa Durga, Devi Chandi, Mahaprabhu Chaitanya, and the fearless spirit of Banga Shakti,” he wrote. “The BJP is the only pro-Bengali party born in Bengal. Others are either political imports or dynastic offshoots with no roots in the state’s cultural or historical fabric.”