SAll days will continue to pass as black days if the BJP continued to rule India by fanning communal and sectarian tension in the country, Mamata Banerjee has said while reacting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unveiling of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s statue in Gujarat as the Statue of Unity.
Contrasting Patel’s ideology with the one preached by the saffron outfit Banerjee told an audience at Alipurduar that unlike Patel, the BJP practiced communal and sectarian politics which would only bring black days and not Achchhe Din or good days as promised by the Prime Minister.
“Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel never believed in politics of caste and religion. He never divided people. He was always for national unity which was proved by his action. But the BJP is trying to divide the country on the basis of caste and religion. This can never bring Achchhe Din and will only bring black days,” Banerjee said adding all the days ruled by the BJP were in fact black days.
Raising the NRC issue in Assam, where about 40 lakh people — of which majority were Bengalis — had allegedly been thrown out of the National Register for Citizens, Banerjee said Patel used to tell all the leaders to treat the people of all community, class, caste and languages equally “but here the Govt of Assam is driving away the Bengalis and the Gujarat Govt is driving away the Biharis from those States.”
She said on the birthday of Sardar Patel, “we hope the people of the country to remain united,” adding the BJP’s dirty tricks to divide the people of Bengal to garner votes will never be successful. “We will thwart their attempts to divide the people of Bengal for political reasons and we ask you to remain alert about their political designs,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress and the BJP locked horns in an unrelated development with the Assam Government proposing the purchase the Kolkata house of singer Bhupen Hazarika while the Trinamool dismissing the proposal as a cheap method of doing regional politics.
“Where were they for these many years. Today they are asking for the house of Bhupen Hazarika because they look at him as an Assamese. They are ignoring the fact that Hazarika was a great singer who sang for the unity of the country, unity of Bengal and Assamese cultures. A majority of his songs were in Bengali,” State Minister Partho Chatterjee said.
The Assam Government has proposed to purchase the house of Hazarika at Tollygunge Golf Club Road in order to convert it into a museum. The BJP reacted to Chatterjee’s statement with senior leader Rahul Sinha saying the “the TMC Government has done nothing to preserve the memories of Hazarika. The house is in a dilapidated condition. And they are not letting the Assam Government to preserve it.”