The Trinamool Congress will now venture out of Bengal putting up candidates in neighbouring States of Jharkhand, Assam, Tripura and Odisha Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said. But before doing so she would take up the issue of tricky Electronic Voting Machines with the Election Commission and raise it in the all-party meeting set to be held before the Winter Session of Parliament in Delhi.
Launching a vitriolic attack on the BJP for trying to communalise Bengal by its “impure Ravan Rath Yatras,” Mamata on Wednesday told a massive gathering in Purulia that the saffron party that was day- dreaming of capturing the whole India will go into oblivion after 2019 general elections as it will be defeated in the Lok Sabha polls.
“You have heard of Jagannath’s Rath Yatra, Sri Krishna’s Rath Yatra but have you ever heard of BJP Rath Yatra. They have planned Rath Yatras in Bengal. During the Yatra their leaders will emerge from the belly of the five-star Rath to deliver speeches igniting riots. I call this a Ravan Yatra which will make our land impure,” Mamata said adding her Trinamool Congress will “purify the routes made impure by BJP’s Ravana Rath through a Pavitra Yatra the very next day of their Rath Yatra.”
The BJP will take out three Rath Yatras from Ganga Sagar, Birbhum and Coochbehar —on December 5, 7 and 9 — with each one of them converging in a grand rally at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground, most likely on January 23. While BJP president Amit Shah will inaugurate these Yatras, Prime Minister Narendera Modi will hold four rallies enroute and a fifth one in Kolkata.
Attacking the BJP for sending in activists from Jharkhand to “vitiate our people in Bengal,” Mamata asked her party men to “start working” in the neighbouring State with a view to organise the people in that State under the TMC banner. “We will contest elections in Jharkhand, Assam, Odisha and even Tripura,” she said.
Raising once again doubt over the fidelity of EVMs as “even today I learnt about many voting machines going kaput in Madhya Pradesh,” Banerjee said she will raise the issue with the Election Commission of India as also in the coming all-party meeting in Delhi.
“I will demand VVPAT machines for all the booths because only 2-3 per cent VVPATs cannot ensure reliability of the election process,” she said.
Attacking the Centre for doing nothing for Bengal but only putting roadblocks in its path of development, Banerjee said “this Government in the Centre is good for nothing. It only knows to criticize without helping the States.”
The Chief Minister said her party was organising the anti-BJP forces in one platform and most national leaders had agreed to join the Trinamool-sponsored all-party grand rally to be held in Kolkata on January 19.
“Most of the parties save two have given their acquiescence to join the rally. All leaders from Deve Gowda ji, Chandrababu Naidu Akhilesh Yadav, Tejaswi Yadav, Kumarsamy, Arvind Kejriwal to Stalin have agreed to join the rally. Two parties are
yet to give their confirmation but we hope they too will,” Mamata said adding the BJP was set to lose in 2019.
“In 2019 they are losing the elections. In Bengal they will lose even the two seats that they presently have.”
