{"id":4418,"date":"2019-02-13T18:38:29","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T13:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/?p=4418"},"modified":"2021-01-05T03:12:42","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T21:42:42","slug":"mamata-banerjee-calls-narendra-modi-raavan-and-gabbar-singh-in-delhi-says-ready-to-join-hands-with-cpim-and-congress-nationally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/mamata-banerjee-calls-narendra-modi-raavan-and-gabbar-singh-in-delhi-says-ready-to-join-hands-with-cpim-and-congress-nationally\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamata Banerjee calls Narendra Modi “Raavan” and “Gabbar Singh” in Delhi, says ready to join hands with CPI(M) and Congress nationally"},"content":{"rendered":"

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying she was not afraid of him. \u201cModi-ji<\/em>, have you seen yourself in the mirror?\u201d Banerjee asked. \u201cYou say you have 56 inch-chest. So what? Even Raavan had it,\u201d she said in her characteristic acerbic wit from the dais today, drawing thundering applause.<\/p>\n

Banerjee also equated him and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Amit Shah with Gabbar Singh, the villain in the 1970s Bollywood blockbuster film Sholay<\/em>. \u201cEarlier, people used to ask their children to fall asleep, else Gabbar Singh would come. Now farmers, journalists,\u00a0 people working in important institutions are all being asked to fall asleep, else the two Gabbars would come,\u201d she added sarcastically. “They have blood in their hands,” she said, reminding the audience of the Gujarat riots.<\/p>\n

Banerjee said that the Centre was destroying all institutions including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by using them to \u201cscare\u201d people, and she wouldn\u2019t be surprised if a central government agency landed at her home soon. \u201cBut I am not afraid. You tell me when you will come to my house. I will keep food ready. I\u2019ll keep both vegetarian and non-vegetarian items,\u201d she said, adding that a Central government minister had called her and asked her not to openly criticise Modi. \u201cWhy should I listen to him? I am not afraid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Banerjee also said that mobile phones of journalists (including their Editors), police officers, officers of the civil administration, politicians \u2013 including those from the BJP \u2013 were all under surveillance. \u201cEven WhatsApp messages are being read,\u201d she said, adding that the surveillance technology had been brought from Israel. \u201cI know my phone too is under surveillance. No one is spared, they do not even trust their own ministers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Only hours ago, the Bengal chief minister was “welcomed” to Delhi rather sarcastically through posters<\/span> <\/a>which took a dig at her “brand” of politics.<\/p>\n

Banerjee today also made it clear in no uncertain terms that she was willing to ally with the Left parties at the national level \u201cfor the sake of saving the nation from Narendra Modi\u201d. \u201cI don\u2019t mind if you fight with me at the state level,\u201d she said, naming the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Interestingly, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury was part of today\u2019s Opposition parties\u2019 meeting in Delhi hosted by Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, though the Left had skipped the one held in Kolkata on January 13 that Mamata Banerjee had organised.<\/p>\n

In the last Assembly elections of 2016, the Congress and CPI(M) had formed an alliance in Bengal to fight the Trinamool Congress. The CPI(M)\u2019s stand has been that the \u201cBJP and Trinamool Congress\u201d are two sides of the same coin, and there has been no soft stand from the CPI(M) side on this so far.<\/p>\n

The Congress nationally though, has taken a soft stand on Trinamool Congress, though this doesn\u2019t exist in Bengal. In fact, today Congress MP from Bengal, Adhir Chowdhury, was critical of Banerjee in the Parliament, leading to an angry outburst from the Bengal chief minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Political fight at state level should not affect national alliance, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":4419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_seo_keywords":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}