West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has distanced herself from the campaign by a united opposition against the citizenship law and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and said her Trinamool Congress party will not participate in a meeting called by Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Delhi on Monday.
The Bengal Chief Minister accused the Left and the Congress of playing "dirty politics" and said she would fight against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and NRC alone.
"Due to the politics of opposition in state, in contradiction with their all-India stance, I have decided not to attend the anti-CAA and NRC meeting on January 13," said Mamata Banerjee, speaking at a special session of the Bengal assembly.
"I was the first to launch an andolan (movement) against CAA NRC," she said. "What the Left and the Congress are doing in the name of the CAA-NRC is not a movement but vandalism."
She asked leaders of other opposition in Delhi to "forgive her" for not attending the meeting as "it was me who had mooted the idea."
"But what happened yesterday in the state it is no more possible for me to attend the meeting anymore," she said.
She was referring to clashes between her party men and Left workers during a strike called by Left trade unions, especially in Malda's Sujapur.
A video from Sujapur that is being circulated on social media shows uniformed cops smashing car windscreens with their rifle butts.