'I Do Not Agree': Mamata Banerjee Fires with Poem After BJP Barges into TMC Turf

Kolkata: A day after the BJP’s stunning performance in the West Bengal Lok Sabha elections, Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee shared a poem on Twitter on Friday with a terse message for the saffron party — "I don't agree". The BJP barged into Banerjee’s turf winning 18 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, reducing the TMC to 22 seats from 34.

Banerjee’s brusque message of “disagreement” was posted thrice in Bengali, Hindi and English. Her poem opens with the clear message that the she neither believes in “the colour of communalism” nor “selling religious aggression”.

“I am a humble servant of the gentle Renaissance raised in Bengal, I believe in a religion that draws light from humanism,” she wrote, adding, “Those who expediently use religion as a trump card and reside on mountains of riches. I keep myself engrossed in my numerous duties while you appear to have no such qualms.”

The poem evidently takes on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s whose campaign dynamics in Bengal mainly focused on ‘Jai Shree Ram’ chants evoking the Hindu hardline sentiments among the otherwise religiously benign Bengalis.

The concluding lines of her poem has an appeal for the people of India – to resist religious aggression. “Those who believe in tolerance, let us come together and awaken all. When the whole world is but one country, O why this arithmetic that seeks to make aggression a virtue,” read Banerjee’s poem.

Soon after receiving a significant jolt on the party’s position in Bengal, Mamata Banerjee called for an emergency meeting of all Trinamool Congress MPs and party leaders to chalk out the strategies for the future and discuss the results of the 17th Lok Sabha election.

Even when the BJP finished at the second position in the state on Thursday, Banerjee congratulated the winners, but added that “all losers are not losers”.

Since coming to power, Banerjee has not lost an election, her seats have not dipped and no party has been able to hold on to its ground, let alone make inroads in her bastion.

This is the worst defeat that the Trinamool Congress has faced since the 2004 Lok Sabha election (when Banerjee had ironically allied with the BJP) when in spite of getting 21.04% votes, the party got only one seat.

The BJP’s star campaigners Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah campaigned extensively across West Bengal and mainly focused on her infamous appeasement policies. While PM Modi called Banerjee "speed-breaker didi", she returned fire dubbing him "expiry babu".