Kolkata : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday reiterated her allegations that Bengali-speaking people were being harassed in the BJP-ruled states.

“Those who are trying to discriminate against Bengalis do have any idea of the language that icons like Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, Kavi Nazrul Islam and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose spoke? Those who came as refugees to our country are now considered as citizens of our country. If there are illegal infiltrators, the Union government can take action against them, and I have nothing to say on that. But there should be unnecessary harassment of people just because they speak in Bengali” the Chief Minister said while addressing a function to celebrate the ‘Kanyashree Day’.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister said that she had received news that one person was not allowed to rent a room at a hotel in Noida just because he was speaking in Bengali.

“There is a necessity to learn the English language. But that does not mean that Bengali will be a forgotten language,” the Chief Minister said.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister said that currently over 93 lakh young women in West Bengal have benefited from the state government’s Kanyashree scheme. Our target is to ensure the figure crosses 1 crore soon,” the Chief Minister said.

“I always think that a society where women are not well off can never be well off. Empowerment of women is necessary for the development of society. It is my pride that today there are more than 93 lakh ‘Kanyashree women’ in our state. Seventeen and a half thousand crore taka has been handed over to them under this project. We don’t just talk about women’s empowerment. We do it,” she said.

‘Kanyashree Prakalpa’ is a targeted conditional cash transfer scheme aimed at checking child marriage and retaining girls in schools and other educational institutions.