Seemingly unable to tame down the Centre on demonetisation and allegedly alarmed at the speed of CBI probe into the chit fund scam that was recurrently ending at the doors of her senior party colleagues, Mamata Banerjee on Friday tested a shrewdly planned weapon to drive a wedge in the saffron house. She proposed to replace the Narendra Modi regime by a National Government to be headed by either lK Advani or Rajnath Singh or Arun Jaitley.
Days after CBI arrested TMC Parliamentary leader Sudip Bandopadhyay a teed off Bengal Chief Minister said there was a “Kalidas” sitting up there who, “has to go so that the country can be saved.” Hence “I appeal to the President to save the country from demonetisation mess” which she claimed had cost Bengal a “mammoth revenue loss of Rs 5,500 crore in revenue affecting directly about 1.25 crore people.”
Talking vehemently in favour of a “consensus Government” and claiming that many people even in the BJP were not happy with demonetisation Banerjee told all the parties to “come together to form a national Government based upon a common minimum programme.”
She added “I do not mind who runs it. It may be Advaniji or Rajnathji or even Jaitleyji” saying the current situation in the country was that “all the institutions are under attack and a dangerous game is being played by the person who is in power.” Banerjee who took stock of the performance of her ministerial colleagues wondered the Centre wanted “all of us to do Modi Puja.”
launching a frontal attack on the Prime Minister she said that what he was doing was a “misuse, bad use and rough use” of power adding “his mindless decisions have broken the economic backbone of the country.
Referring to the deployment of the Central forces at the BJP party office a few days ago when thousands of armed Trinamool men had raided the BJP State headquarters Banerjee said, “India has no Government but a party which is running the country. Who will explain why central forces were deployed at a particular place on demand made by a particular party!” She added “India is run not by a Government but a group of dhandabaz people.”
Getting increasingly fidgety by recurrent arrests of her party Ministers and with claims by the Opposition that the sustained grilling of these leaders could finally lead the investigation to her own doorstep the Chief Minister is known to have instructed her party leaders to not to respond to the CBI summons.
“let them come and arrest you from your home” she is known to have told her party colleagues apparently expecting popular resistance-when the CBI come to arrest them-followed by an intervention of central forces which could give her an issue to peddle throughout the nation.