KOLKATA: TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Friday launched a scathing reproval of the "right-wing forces" of the country, accusing them of "deliberately poisoning India's climate" through hate-mongering in the garb of religion.

Banerjee tagged an archived video clip of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, flanked by then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, making a speech on the need of the ruling dispensation to observe "raj dharma" without discriminating against people on the basis of their "birth, caste or creed."

Banerjee's comments coincided with the day the body of the migrant worker from West Bengal's Murshidabad district Juel Sheikh, lynched in Odisha's Sambalpur on Wednesday, was brought back to his native village for final rites.

Although the police in Odisha have said that the murder was not a targeted killing but a fallout of a personal dispute, a witness to the crime and a co-victim of the assault has alleged that the migrant workers from West Bengal were asked to prove their nationalities upon suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals.

"India's climate is being deliberately poisoned. Right-wing forces, emboldened by power, are openly attacking Dalits, STs and minorities - through fear, lynching, threats and hate, all under the garb of religion," Banerjee wrote on X.

When those in power are the perpetrators and reward the protectors of this violence, impunity becomes policy, he asserted.