West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee yesterday asked her party workers to launch a fortnight-long campaign from August 1 to defeat the ‘communal Bharatiya Janata Party,’ raising the pitch for her proposed federal front of opposition parties.
The Trinamool Congress chief predicted that the BJP-led alliance could end up with less than 100 seats in next year’s general election.
She also said her party would organise a “huge” rally in Kolkata on January 19 next year, where “leaders from all over the country”, including those of the proposed front would call for defeating the BJP in the next general elections.
Addressing Trinamool party workers on the party’s Martyrs’ Day rally, she said: “Bengal will show the way to India, we will show the way to parliament in the coming days.”
Banerjee said the August campaign would have the slogan ‘remove the communal BJP, save the country’.
“On August 15 (Independence Day), all of you should raise the Tricolour and take a vow to ensure that none from the BJP raises the national flag from the Red Fort from 2019 onwards,” she told her party workers.
She appealed to Trinamool activists to work for the victory of the party in all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in next year’s general elections.
Banerjee said the January 19 rally would be held at the sprawling Brigade Parade ground, “from where we will be giving a call to capture power at the Centre.”
“I will bring leaders from across the country on the stage, including those from the federal front,” she said. “We will organise the rally in a big way...our workers should ensure a bigger turnout than today’s,” she said.
The Trinamool chief, who has in the past made clear her national ambitions, said: “We don’t like the chair (top post) that much, we don’t care for the chair, but we care for the country, the people, the soil of the land”.
Referring to the BJP-led government’s victory in the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha on Friday, Banerjee said: “They got 325 votes compared to the opposition’s 126, but the BJP on its own did not get a majority. The AIADMK voted in their favour. Had AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa been alive, they would not have received their votes. They would have lost,” she claimed.
“I doubt if they would manage to get even 100 seats in 2019,” she added.
Banerjee said the saffron party would perform poorly in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Gujarat, which they had swept in 2014. “They would also not able to do much in West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha,” she added.
She said the Trinamool Congress would fight next year’s general elections on its own in West Bnegal and warned the Congress and the Left “not to join hands with the BJP” in the state while seeking her support at the Centre.
“The Congress and the Left are helping the BJP to thrive in Bengal, while seeking our support in Delhi. They should think twice. We do not need their support in Bengal. We will fight alone. But they should remember that we support them in Delhi.”
Referring to her principal adversaries in the state, she asked: “How is it that they have one ideology in Bengal and another in Delhi? Didn’t the Congress, CPI-M and BJP fight (the recent rural polls) together?”
The Trinamool chief said her party has not forgotten the atrocities committed on its supporters during the Left Front regime. “We would thus continue to fight the CPI-M in the state,” she said.
Accusing the BJP of distributing cash among the people in West Bengal to buy their votes, Banerjee warned that it was impossible for the BJP to lure all the 100mn people of the state.
Taking a dig at the BJP for the canopy collapse during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Midnapore last week, Banerjee said: “Those who cannot even construct a pandal talk of nation-building.”
Chandan Mitra joins Trinamool
Former Bharatiya Janata Party leader and two-time Rajya Sabha member Chandan Mitra and four Congress lawmakers in West Bengal yesterday joined Trinamool Congress at its Martyrs’ Day rally in Kolkata. Mitra, editor and managing director of The Pioneer newspaper, quit the BJP earlier this week. Mitra was nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha in August 2003. He was elected for another term in the upper house as a BJP MP from Madhya Pradesh in June 2010. He unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket from Hooghly constituency in West Bengal. There were reports of Mitra being sidelined in the BJP over the past few years after Narendra Modi and Amit Shah took control of the party. Besides Mitra, four state Congress legislators – Samar Mukherjee, Abu Taher, Sabina Yasmin and Akhruzzman – joined the Trinamool. They are among a growing band of Congressmen who have crossed over to the Trinamool but abide by the parent party’s whip in the state assembly to avoid attracting the anti-defection law.
Supporters of the Trinamool Congress Party attend a mass meeting addressed by West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata yesterday.
