Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday shed more tears for the poor saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi had insulted them by telling a UP crowd that the have-nots were sleeping peacefully while the corrupt were spending sleepless nights in the aftermath of demonetisation.
The Chief Minister who was scheduled to meet a host of Opposition leaders in Delhi to up the ante against the BJP in Parliament tweeted, “The PM in his speech said that the poor are sleeping peacefully. This is an insult to commoners and in bad taste.”
Complaining that “this (demonetisation) is a killer for the common people” as “the economy has already lost a staggering Rs 1.5 lakh crore in only six days,” Banerjee said, “My humble suggestion is not to make the people suffer.”
She added, “While common people have been victimised and crushed under weight of demonetisation, many economists now predicting an onset of recession.”
Incidentally, the Prime Minister had also said in his speech that it was only those people were running from pillar to post who had the biggest amount of ill-gotten money.
Soon after her tweet, BJP leader Siddharthnath Singh said Mamata’s tantrums were proportional to the losses her party leaders suffered on account of Modi’s drive against corruption.
Singh said Banerjee’s regime in Bengal was a “mirror image of the one ran by the erstwhile left Front.” The left gave birth to the chit fund companies and fake currency racket while the Trinamool Congress nurtured it allowing it to grow into a full-grown tree, he added calling Mamata the “queen of chit funds like Saradha and Narada”.
As Modi’s demonetisation had hit the corrupt parties the hardest, the leaders like Mamata was throwing loud tantrums, he maintained.
Incidentally senior CPI(M) leader Md Salim whose party had for the time being not ruled out a floor-coordination with the other Opposition parties — even the Trinamool Congress — “to pin down the BJP” earlier said Mamata and her Trinamool Congress was the hardest hit by the demonetisation.
Demonetisation had rendered the tomes of black currency notes — which ran into a few thousand crores — that the Trinamool had earned through chit fund, TET, Trdient, SJDA and other scams — into valueless paper stacks, said many left leaders privately.
“The whole money is useless now and their leaders have lost sleep over how to fund their future election campaigns,” left leaders like Salim who were publicly opposing Modi but privately praising him, had said.
Meanwhile, sources in the Trinamool Congress said Mamata was likely to meet a host of Opposition leaders in Delhi. “She will meet Arvind Kejriwal, representatives of SP and RJD and if possible Sonia Gandhi,” a senior TMC leader said.