There was no respite in the ongoing turf war between ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP with the former refusing to recognise the saffron outfit as a political party and comparing it with a bat.

Reacting to BJP State president Dilip Ghosh’s comments that Trinamool Congress was a party of criminals which had unleashed a reign of terror and bloodshed in Bengal, senior TMC leader and Bengal Minister Firhad Hakim on Tuesday said “we do not recognise BJP as a political party because it has no genuine base in the State.

“If you think a bat to be a bird then you must take the BJP as a political party. Much of its muscle-flexing is on account of the support it is getting from the CPI(M) supporters. It is with the help of the CPI(M) votes that they have been able to win some seats (in Lok Sabha elections). Next time they will be back to square one.”

Attacking the saffron outfit further he said the BJP leaders were taking the help of CPI(M) supporters to stand on its feet on the one side and on the other they were keeping their own leaders behind the protective ring of the central forces. “They don’t have the courage to reach out to the people on their own without the help of the central forces,” he said. Attacking the BJP for unleashing the CBI and ED on opposition leaders he said “had it not been for the ED and CBI then many TMC leaders who have been forced to join the BJP leaders would have come back to us.”

The ferocity of TMC-BJP dogfight increased in the past one week following the alleged murder of two BJP supporters in Birbhum and North 24 Parganas districts on the one hand and the murder of two TMC leaders in Murshidabad and South 24 Parganas.