West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday was quite clear about her national political ambition – to organise leaders for a federal front and to “conquer” Delhi in 2019. At the Martyrs’ Day rally in Kolkata, the Trinamool Congress chief announced that she would invite non-BJP national leaders from across the country at a rally in Kolkata at the Brigade Parade Grounds on January 19 to look ahead to 2019 Lok Sabha polls. She also vowed that her party would win all 42 Lok Sabha seats from Bengal in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
“Bengal will show the way. We will show the way to the Parliament,” she said at the 25th anniversary of the Martyrs’ Day meet – an annual programme of the Trinamool Congress that marks the killing of 11 youth Congress workers from police firing on July 21, 1993. Trinamool Congress was formed later, in 1998.
Banerjee said that the 325 votes in Parliament in favour of the BJP last evening would change in 2019. “It (the results of the no-confidence motion in the Parliament on Friday) is a reflection of what it used to be in 2014. And it will change soon,” she said, adding that votes in UP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar, Punjab and losses for the AIADMK will change the overall political equation in the country in the coming months.
“Seats in favour of the BJP will at best be around 150,” she said, indicating that she had made a realistic calculation of what will happen in the Lok Sabha polls in the coming year.
She announced a series of programmes for her party based on the slogan, “BJP hatao, desh bachao”. Mamata took a swipe at the BJP on their public meeting in Midnapore last week. Part of a bamboo structure supporting a canopy at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Midnapore had broken while Modi was addressing the gathering. “You can’t even build a pandal and stage, how can you build a nation?” she asked.
BJP buying votes and support against money
Mamata Banerjee today alleged that the BJP has been distributing money in some areas of West Bengal to “purchase” support and votes. In some places they are offering money, in certain areas they are giving bikes. “I found this sort of thing happening in Alipurduar,” she said. “But 100 votes can be purchased, not 10 crore votes,” Banerjee added. She asked people to lodge complaints with the police if they found out similar cases.
She said the Prime Minister and home minister, before asking the states to take action on lynching, ought to stop their party president and other party leaders from making statements that lead to strife. There are attempts to create riots and strife, she said.
At the Kolkata rally, Mamata Banerjee spoke of the need to break religious extremism and the need for religious unity. “I don’t approve of your (the BJP’s) notions of Hinduism that talk of only hatred. Here’s a king bigger than Hitler and Mussolini,” Banerjee said. “Democracy and secularism are in crisis. We have to come out of it,” she said.
Mamata Banerjee also asked the Congress in West Bengal to come to a conclusion what their policy on the Trinamool Congress was going to be. “In the panchayat election, the CPM, BJP and the Congress fought together,” she said. “We are helping each other at the national level, so you must decide what your stand is going to be here,” she said, referring to the Congress leaders from West Bengal.
New entrants
Former BJP MP Chandan Mitra, former CPM MP Moinul Hassan, Congress’ Samar Mukherjee, Abu Taher, Sabina Yasmin and Akhuzzman joined the Trinamool Congress today. Expelled CPM MP Ritabrata Bandopadhyay was also seen on the dais, but he hasn’t officially joined the party. According to Mamata Banerjee, Ritabrata was present as an “observer”.