Mamata, Abhishek on three-day visit to poll-bound Goa
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee flew to
Goa, on Sunday evening, on a three-day visit to kick-start the Trinamul Congress’ campaign for the Assembly election in the western state. She will address three rallies during her second tour to Goa in the last two months.
The TMC informed that on Monday its supremo would meet the “prominent editors of media houses” at the International Centre before meeting all Goa TMC leaders at the same venue. Later, she will address a public meeting at Benaulim where former Goa CM Churchill Alemao is an MLA of NCP. Speculation is rife that Mr Alemao will join the TMC again in that rally. He, along with his daughter Valanka, met the TMC leadership in Kolkata recently. Mr Alemao earlier joined the TMC in 2014 and got a ticket to contest the Lok Sabha polls from South Goa in the same year, but lost. He later joined the NCP.
On Tuesday, Ms Banerjee will address rallies at Panjim and Assanora. Her MP nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has also reached Goa. Ms Banerjee’s second Goa tour comes a day after the TMC promised the coastal state to provide a financial aid of `5,000 per month in a direct transfer mode to the female head of each family under the Griha Lakshmi scheme in line with the Lakshmir Bhandar in West Bengal.
Taking a dig at the TMC’s poll promise, Congress leader and former Union finance minister P. Chidambaram tweeted, “Here is a math that deserves the Nobel Prize for Economics. A monthly grant of `5,000 to a woman in 3.5 lakh households in Goa will cost `175 crore a month. This is `2,100 crore a year. It is a ‘small’ sum for the state of Goa that had an outstanding debt of `23,473 crore at the end of March 2020. God bless Goa! Or should it be God save Goa?”