Mamata Banerjee’s blistering attack on the ‘Beti Jalao Party’ (BJP)

Addressing her party’s annual ‘Shahid Diwas' rally in Central Kolkata on Friday afternoon, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in a blistering attack on BJP and the Prime Minister declared that she was not after power or post in the 2024 election. Her party will fight to restore democracy and stand with the opposition alliance INDIA in 2024.

“I am happy about the alliance that 26 political parties have formulated. From now on, our clarion call will be ‘Jeetega Bharat’. All our future programmes will be held under the I.N.D.I.A banner,” she said.

Addressing the large crowd, she taunted BJP and said that the party called for ‘Beti Bachao’ but it believed in ‘Beti Jalao’. While the BJP and the union government have been sending ‘central teams’ to Bengal at the drop of a hat, she wondered why the union government had never bothered to send a central team to Manipur where 160 lives have been lost and where the Manipur chief minister has admitted that hundreds of videos of women being disrobed and assaulted are in circulation.

“The ‘merchants of terror’ are sending central teams to Bengal…BJP leaders are openly claiming they would ensure imposition of Presidents’ Rule in Bengal; but why isn’t the same happening in Manipur” she asked. A delegation of chief ministers from non-NDA parties will visit Manipur, she declared.

“BJP is trying to incite violence in Bengal and divide the state. They want to separate the Gorkha hills from Bengal. They want to create fissures between Rajbanshis and Kamatapuris. They want to incite violence between Kurmis and Adivasis,” she alleged.

Referring to the viral video of naked women being paraded in BJP-ruled Manipur, she said that this was not an isolated incident. “Even in the Bilkis Bano case, rapists were let off by this government. Even after our women wrestlers’ protests, regular bail was granted to the main accused, a BJP MP,” she pointed out.

INDIA will win; Modi and BJP will lose. That is our slogan, she asserted, setting at rest remaining doubts over AITC’s participation in the opposition alliance INDIA. Addressing the crowd in Bangla she declared, “Ghore-ghore ek-i daak, Modi jaak, Modi jaak” (from every house you hear the same call that it is time for Modi to go).

“We don’t care about any post; we only want peace in our nation and BJP to be ousted. The BJP Government has crossed all limits of decency and it is time for the people to remove them from power.”

The general secretary of Trinamool Congress (AITC) Abhishek Banerjee, who happens to be the chief minister’s nephew, declared that houses of all BJP ministers from West Bengal will be gheraoed peacefully from 10 in the morning to 6 pm on 5 August.