Days after returning from Delhi and little more than a week after she disclosed her national ambitions from a Trinamool Congress rally in Kolkata, Bengal Chief Mamata Banerjee on Monday launched a scathing attack on the BJP-led Central Government for trying to divide the people of the country along religious and caste lines.
Coming down heavily on the Narendra Modi Government for having done nothing except “unleashing cow vigilantes” throughout the country, Banerjee said, “You are doing nothing except spreading fundamentalism, giving ads and doing cow census,” adding that the BJP was doing it consciously to divide the people of the country along communal and caste lines.
“You (BJP) are spreading fundamentalism and even not sparing the Hindus when your men attack the Dalits,” the Chief Minister said at a programme organised for minority development. “Here you are attacking the Dalits, there you are attacking the Christians and somewhere else you are attacking the Muslims,” she said adding “every where your men are involved in spreading hatred.”
Attacking the Centre for allowing a portal launched for giving scholarships to the minority community to lie non-functional for a year Banerjee said “either you repair it or you simply discontinue it. There is no use continuing with something and intentionally allowing it to remain non-functional.”
The Chief Minister who had a few days ago told a Trinamool Congress rally that she was planning to bring together all the like-minded regional parties and prop a non-BJP, non-Congress Federal Front in the Centre alerted the people not to be provoked by the BJP's “evil designs to divide the people.”
She said “the BJP is trying to divide the people. They are not even sparing the Hindus and are attacking the Dalits. They have no regards for united India. So they are planning to provoke the people. But do not get provoked by them, because we want peace to prevail. We want development. “But they want to divide us. So we should not step into the trap layed down by them.”
The Chief Minister had last week sent a three-member Trinamool parliamentary committee led by Derek O Brien to visit Una in Gujarat to sympathise with Dalit victims of a clash.
Unhappy with the cow census undertaken by a particular organisation in Midnapore a nervous Chief Minister is known to have asked her party men to remain vigilant about ensuring that the former left supporters do not get sucked into the saffron orbit by in the name of cow census.
“This Government is doing nothing but only giving advertisements and spreading fundamentalism in the name of cow census” Banerjee said, asking the people to “remain vigilant against their evil designs.”