Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday claimed that she won’t give any credit to BJP for winning the Tripura elections as winning in Tripura is like “winning the municipal elections”.
Discrediting the BJP’s massive victory in Tripura, which had remained a Left bastion for 25 years, Banerjee told News18 Bangla in an exclusive interview that the recently concluded elections is not a cause of worry for her.
The Tripura elections were being touted as the gateway for BJP to make inroads into Bengal.
Speaking on Congress’ refusal to go into an alliance with the Trinamool Congress in Bengal, she added, “We wanted to give 30 seats to the Congress in Tripura, to which they did not agree. But now the time has come to think collectively.”
Reflecting her opinion of the Left stalwarts of Bengal, Mamata said that except for a few Left leaders of the earlier generation, most don’t have any ideology and in Bengal they have struck a secret deal with the BJP to take on the Trinamool Congress.
She said, “Former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu used to believe in an ideology. Even Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, also ex-CM, believes in an ideology. But most of the Left leaders in Bengal today do not believe in any such thing. They are opportunists.”
She went on to elaborate on her claim saying, “I have all the information on who is having lunch and dinner together and who all are meeting with the BJP leaders. ‘Ram’ (BJP) and ‘Baam’ (Left parties) are together in Bengal.”
Speaking on the violence during panchayat poll nomination procedure, she said, “Certain media houses in Bengal have joined hands with the BJP and are spreading hatred. I would like to ask them if our workers were involved in violence then how come the Opposition parties managed to file nearly 96,000 nominations.”
She added, “There is one media house in Bengal which broadcasts fake news. They brought goons from neighbouring Jharkhand and created problem in Birbhum’s Suri. One person was killed and it is a matter of investigation as to how did the particular media house manage to get footage of the dead body. The person who was killed was a TMC worker and if they think that they can get away with such crime, then we will not spare them.”
She also said that it would be tough for the BJP to win the 2019 General Elections because of the blunder they had made with the twin decisions of demonetisation and GST.
Comments
0 comment