PM Modi berates Mamata over Ferdous campaign blunder

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a scathing attack on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for allowing Bangladeshi actor Ferdous Ahmed to campaign for the Trinamool Congress in the state, Indian newspaper The Statesman reports.

Addressing a campaign rally for the Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal on Saturday, Modi berated ‘speed-breaker didi’ Mamata and said, “It is shameful that people from the neighbouring country (Bangladesh) are campaigning for the TMC.”

“This was done by the party to appease the minority community.”

Actor Ferdous was the subject of fierce criticism for taking part in a campaign of a Trinamool Congress candidate while in Kolkata for a film shoot.

The Indian government subsequently ordered the actor to leave the country after cancelling his visa following a report from the Bureau of Immigration on the matter.

The actor later apologised for his 'inadvertent mistake' and said he had been 'driven by emotion from the love of the people of West Bengal' when he had joined the campaign along with his Indian co-actors.

West Bengal is going to the polls in all the seven phases in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.