Furious Mamata miffed at house exchange
The anti-BJP "Maha-Gathbandhan" (grand alliance) in the making appeared to be in tatters on Wednesday as a furious Trinamul Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee bluntly told Sonia Gandhi that she would never forget her insult by the Congress MPs in the Parliament House.
The two ladies came face to face in Parliament’s Central Hall shortly after Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who was the Bengal Congress president until recently, attacked Trinamul Congress over the Saradha chit fund case during debate in the Lok Sabha on a Bill to ban unregulated deposit schemes.
Mamata was quite upset at the Congress MPs raising slogans against her on the chit fund issue right in the presence of Sonia Gandhi. She refused to calm down even when Sonia tried to pacify her saying they may target each other but they still remain friends.
"We are accusing each other but we are friends," Sonia told Mamata only to get back a terse response that she will see to it that the Congress gets not a single Lok Sabha seat from West Bengal.
Mamata was in Delhi to join an anti-Modi mega rally at Jantar Mantar by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal with a call for "Remove Dictatorship, Save Country. Most of the Opposition leaders joined the rally.
She walked into the Parliament House after attending the rally, only to be confronted by a couple of the Congress MPs from West Bengal trying to ridicule her. Only three hours earlier, both the Congress and the Trinamul Congress members, led by Rahul Gandhi, were holding a protest in the Parliament House against the Rafale aircraft scam.
Adhir Chowdhury, a known Mamata baiter was removed as the state Congress chief only to attempt a tie-up with Trinamul in the elections. In his speech in the Lok Sabha, he squarely blamed the Mamata Government for looting of lakhs of people by the Saradha chit fund.
The Trinamul Congress members kept raising slogans from the well until the Speaker allowed their leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay to speak. He said his party not only supports the Bill but also recommends incorporating a Bill passed by the West Bengal Assembly. Wondering why other deposit schemes like Sahara were not properly investigated, he said these schemes should not be called "chit funds."
Mamata was piqued as the Congress MPs from West Bengal taunted that several of her party leaders have been charged or arrested in the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund cases involving the swindle of crores taken from small investors.