Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
10 MLAs join BJP at Shah’s Bengal rally
KOLKATA: Seven sitting legislators of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), including prominent leader Suvendu Adhikari, and three others from the Left and the Congress on Saturday afternoon joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the presence of Union home minister Amit Shah at a rally in Midnapore town of West Bengal’s West Midnapore district.
The assembly polls in the state are due in five months and the defections could prove to be a headache for chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
“Didi (Mamata Banerjee), listen very carefully. Today, I have come to declare that when the election results are announced BJP will get more than 200 seats,” Shah said in a short but fiery speech. In the evening, Shah discussed election strategy at a closed-door meeting in Kolkata. It was attended by BJP leaders from other states as well.
Among the 10 MLAs who switched sides, Adhikari is the only one who submitted his resignation to the assembly but it has not been accepted yet on technical grounds. He touched Shah’s feet while taking the BJP flag from the Union home minister.
“None of those who left were leaders of significance. The TMC will win the polls without a hitch,” TMC Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy said even as posters calling Adhikari Mir Zafar (the general who betrayed Bengal’s last independent nawab Sirajud-Daulah at the Battle of Plassey in 1757) appeared in East
Midnapore, the rebel’s home turf. Some offices set up by his followers were also ransacked. Adhikari has been provided security by central paramilitary forces.
The TMC’s Burdwan East Lok Sabha MP Sunil Mandal, former minister Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, former Lok Sabha member from north Bengal’s Alipurduar, Dasrath Tirkey, and 15 civic body councillors of the TMC and other parties picked up the BJP flag along with at least 20 district-level leaders. Significantly, several members from Muslim organisations set up by the TMC also joined the BJP.
“Didi, you are talking of switching sides. Didn’t you leave the Congress and form the TMC? Wasn’t it changing allegiance? Now you are accusing Suvendu Bhai of changing sides. Thousands of people are waiting to join the BJP. Just wait and watch,” said Shah.
“Can you see the future of millions of youths who need jobs?
You can only see your nephew and want to make him the chief minister,” Shah, who earlier in the day had lunch at a farmer’s home, said, without naming Abhishek Banerjee, the chief minister’s nephew and Lok Sabha member.
Adhikari too delivered a short but vitriolic speech. “You (Mamata Banerjee) will not be number one again. You will be number two. I do not recognise anyone as my mother, except the one who gave birth to me, and my country,” said Adhikari.
Targeting Banerjee and the TMC for branding the BJP’s national leaders as “outsiders,” Adhikari said, “Amit Shah Ji, JP Nadda Ji and the others are being called outsiders. India is one nation. I want Bengal and India to have the same government or else Bengal will not survive. There are no jobs, no progress. We have to ensure Narendra Modi’s government in Bengal.”