Trinamool Congress MP Sougata Roy says Amit Shah & JP Nadda are outsiders, “let them understand Bengal first”

Trinamool Congress senior leader and the party’s member of Parliament (MP) Sougata Roy said today that BJP senior leaders Amit Shah and JP Nadda are “outsiders” and should study and understand West Bengal first.

“JP Nadda is not well versed in Lok Sabha elections. He comes from a small state Himachal Pradesh which has only four Lok Sabha seats. Moreover, he has been a Rajya Sabha MP. Let him first understand the nuances of Lok Sabha elections in a state like West Bengal,” Roy said, answering a question during a press conference. Nadda is scheduled to visit Bengal in the second week of December to gear up the party’s plans with an eye on the 2021 Assembly elections of the state.

With Assembly elections scheduled in West Bengal next year, BJP national leaders are visiting the state rather frequently to show the party direction and work out the details with state leaders. Union Home Minister Amit Shah was in the state early November and visited some south Bengal districts.

Speaking on Shah, Sougata Roy said that the BJP leader was not doing justice to the position of the Union Home Minister. “We thought he would look at the work of the Home Minister here, supervise the work of the BSF and other Central government agencies in Bengal. Instead, he garlanded a ‘wrong’ statue and did some other work,” Roy said. During his visit to Bankura, Shah had garlanded the statue of a nameless tribal hunger under the impression that it was a statue of Birsa Munda, an anti-colonial leader.

Speaking at a meeting in Khatra of Bankura district yesterday, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that while people saw the tribal family (whose home Shah visited and where he had lunch) chopping vegetables and spreading coriander over several dishes, in reality Shah did not eat the food cooked there. Instead, food from outside – including basmati rice and poppy seat fritters (postor bora) – was eaten by the Union Home Minister. She alleged that the food and the cook had been taken there.