A poster in the West Midnapore district of India's West Bengal state provoked on Friday a new row between the federally ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the state's ruling party Trinamool Congress (TMC).
In the poster, Banerjee can be seen as Hindu Goddess Durga with 10 hands, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and federal Home Minister, Amit Shah, have been depicted as Mahishasur - a demon in Hindu mythology.
Mamata Banerjee as Goddess Durga
© Photo : Twitter/@geekyblogger
The poster also shows opposition parties - the BJP, Congress, and the Communist Party of India (CPI) as sacrificial goats, with a message that "if anyone voted for [the opposition parties], they would be sacrificed".
TMC members said they were unaware of who put the poster up in the area.
Branding the posters an insult to the prime minister and home minister, BJP politician Vipul Acharya said that they'll report the matter to the Election Commission.
West Bengal is at present in the throes of local elections, the last phase of which will be held on 27 February.
According to the Hindu mythology, Goddess Durga fought Mahishasur for about 15 days, and the deceitful demon kept changing his form to escape from her. When Mahishasur changed into a buffalo, Durga stabbed and killed him.
Last year in October, similar hoardings were put up across Bhabanipur in the Kolkata district of West Bengal during by-elections, in which Banerjee was depicted with folded hands and described as “ModiShahsurmadini”, ie "the one who slayed Narendra Modi and Amit Shah".