West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee today said that she wanted to give up her position as the state\u2019s CM to work for the party, but was not given permission to do so by the Trinamool Congress leadership.<\/p>\n
She said she was not happy to be holding on to the chair, and was keen on doing a lot more \u2013 she wanted to focus on party work. She said this at a press conference after reviewing the party\u2019s performance with all the parliamentary seat candidates on Saturday. \u201cI do not need the chair, but I can say that the chair needs me,\u201d she said, adding that she had done a lot of development work for the state, \u201cperhaps a lot more than required.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will now focus more on the party work,\u201d she said. The West Bengal CM said she refused to believe the results in the country could be so poor for the Opposition parties and said \u201cit was all fixed\u201d. \u201cA few months after winning in three states, the performance [of the Congress] cannot be so poor,\u201d she said.\u00a0She highlighted the fact that money and BJP’s strategy of division along religious lines were the main contributing factors for the election results.<\/p>\n
She said that the voting percentage had increased for the Trinamool and will increase further in the coming days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere never was the use of so much money in elections before and it can be very bad for democracy,\u201d she said. Banerjee added that police officers had been transferred throughout the election process constantly in order to pump in money. \u201cSo much of money has come, but who will stop its flow? The person who can arrest them is the BJP\u2019s man,\u201d she said, without naming the police officer.<\/p>\n
Banerjee said that she was informed of a person who didn\u2019t go to work in Barrackpore for some days as he had been given money by the BJP candidate from that seat. \u201cWe don\u2019t have so much of money. What can we do if people vote for such reasons?\u201d she asked, adding that the battle was not over yet. She said she would not change herself and that the fight will continue. \u201cI will go to iftar<\/em>\u00a0on May 30 \u2013 I favour the Muslims, I will definitely go to the iftar<\/em>,\u201d she said sarcastically.<\/p>\n She said that the setback was \u201ctemporary\u201d, and that \u201cone cannot fool all the people all the time\u201d.<\/p>\n Banerjee also expressed unhappiness about the decision to keep the Central paramilitary forces in the state. \u201cThey can keep the forces here, but the state has to pay for it,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy isn\u2019t the model code of conduct being lifted still?\u201d she asked, adding that the BJP was constantly attacking Trinamool Congress workers.<\/p>\n She further said that the Election Commission was \u201cthe man of the match\u201d in this election. \u201cIt never had been so biased earlier. This time the EC has been openly biased [in favour of the ruling party],\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The fight will continue, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":5601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5600","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=5600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5600"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=5600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}