Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday roared back at the Central Government for its anti-farmer attitude saying she had all along been with the farmers and would continue to remain by them.

Slamming the BJP-led Centre for “vitiating the atmosphere of the country,” Banerjee said she was ready to join the farmers’ protest in Delhi.

Saying that the “brutal suppression” of the farmers’ movement in Haryana was “very unfortunate,” she said that this was the first Central Government which was “trying to curb all democratic and fundamental rights.”

She said, “It has passed a law which is against the interests of the farmers,” reminding that no Government could take away the democratic rights of the farmers.

She added India belonged to everyone and not a single outfit or a group of people “What was the role of BJP during the freedom struggle? The country got freedom long back. Some of your leaders have even betrayed (the freedom struggle),” she told the media.

Apart from the farm laws the Centre also passed the “anti-people Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill” which had led to massive rise in the price of onion and potato because the

traders were hoarding the vegetables, she said adding the BJP was “gradually showing

its real face.”

She attacked the BJP leadership for trying to convert Bengal into Gujarat by bringing in outsiders who had no idea of the culture and history of the State.

“Why do they want to turn our Bengal into a riot-torn place like Gujarat? We don’t want riots. Bengal is a land of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, poet Nazrul Islam, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Swami Vivekananda.

The people of the State want to live in harmony and peace… why is the BJP planning to incite communal divide in Bengal,” she asked and said the outsiders who were coming to Bengal would go away after the elections but leave back a divide which the people of the State would not tolerate.