The war of words continued between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress as the Bengal ruling outfit on Sunday lashed out at the saffron leadership for holding a “pipe dream” for the eastern State reminding it about its recent reverses in MP and other States.
Reacting to BJP president Amit Shah’s statement that his party would witness real “golden age” after winning Karnataka, Bengal, Odisha and Kerala, Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien said winning Bengal would remain a “pipe dream” for the BJP as it would not be in power to celebrate that after 2019.
“First let them hold on to the two seats that they presently have in Bengal and then dream of winning the whole State,” O’Brien said vowing to oust the saffron Government from Delhi in 2019. Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be hoisting the tri-colour for the last time from Red Fort in 2018 whereafter his party would be wiped out, the Trinamool leader in Rajya Sabha said.
“There will be no Modi to hoist the flag in 2019 elections. So first let them first hold on to Delhi then think of Bengal,” he said adding “Tripura would give them only two MPs but they will still have to win the remaining 543 seats which they will not be able to do,” he said.
O’Brien was only dittoing what Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said a few hours before. “If they think that winning Tripura means winning Bengal or for that matter winning whole of India then they are wrong because going by their recent performance in western or other north Indian States it is clear that they are on the wane,” Banerjee said showing how the BJP just managed to scrape through in Gujarat and lost local elections in MP and Rajasthan.
Even in Tripura “had the Congress taken my suggestion of a mutual alliance taking the tribal parties together then the BJP would have not been able to come to power there,” she said.
Another Trinamool leader Partho Chatterjee said “if the BJP is nourishing a dream of winning Bengal after Tripura then they are living in a fool’s paradise because in Tripura they had to handle some 25 lakh voters whereas in Bengal they will have to reach out to more than 5 crore voters. Today they are playing the victory band but tomorrow they will not find a place to hide.”
However BJP State president Dilip Ghosh said “Trinamool leaders seem to have become nervous with our performance or else they would not have reacted like this to our victory in the Northeastern States. We are fast removing CPI(M) from the second place and now we are aiming the first place in Bengal. let us see what happens in 2019.”