West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee today accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not making any attempt to avert the terrorist attack in Kashmir’s Pulwama “despite knowing it was going to take place.”
Speaking to her party leaders from all over Bengal at a core committee meeting of the Trinamool Congress, Banerjee said today in Kolkata that the Centre gets intelligence inputs and knew about the attack, “and yet had sent the jawans along the road instead of airlifting them”.
“There are intelligence inputs, and yet you did nothing, you did not airlift them, nor sanitised the road… Why? Because you wanted to take advantage during elections,” Banerjee said.
She said that the government was playing with the lives of the jawans, and “playing” a game of war (juddho-juddho khyala) and a shadow war was being played out with an eye on the coming Lok Sabha polls.
This is the first time that Banerjee has made such a direct attack at the Prime Minister. Earlier, she had mentioned Pulwama, the Lok Sabha elections and a shadow war, at a press conference on February 18, but her attack had not been so direct then. At that time she had questioned intelligence failure and asked what the Centre had been doing for the past five years, and why the government had suddenly taken such a pro-active role now that elections were knocking at the door.
In today’s meeting Mamata Banerjee also asked the local, district level leaders of her party whether they were “afraid” of what was going on at the grassroots level. She said that there will be lure of cash, threats and intimidation in the run up to the polls, but she asked them to not be afraid.
“They [the BJP] are offering huge sums of money. Where is it coming from?” she asked. She said the BJP was trying to create unrest in the state. “They are creating rumours and trying to set one community against another,” she said, asking her party members to resist these attempts. “Don’t take the law in your hands. Go to the police, and if they don’t listen, come to my house. My doors are open,” she said.
Banerjee said that there would be parivartan (change) at the Centre, and her party would get all 42 Lok Sabha seats from Bengal. “There has to be a change, parivartan at the Centre. Bengal will show the way to the country,” she said, reiterating to her party members their call to oust the BJP.
Significantly, Banerjee asked three senior leaders of her party to ensure proper training of Trinamool Congress workers to ensure they understand the functioning of the electronic voting machine (EVM). Several opposition political parties have appealed to the Election Commission to do away with EVMs alleging these could be tampered with. However, the EC authorities have said that EVMs could not be tampered with, and ruled out going back to paper ballots.
