Virtually kicking off the BJP’s election campaign in West Bengal, party national president Amit Shah on Monday took Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee head on saying instead of bringing the promised Poribortan (change) she had only brought Patan (fall) by allowing ponzi business and fake currency racket to flourish in the State.
Picking up from where Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh left last week, Shah hits the Chief Minister where it hurt the most literally linking her ruling Trinamool Congress with the roaring ponzi business that had hit lakhs of people.
“The 17 lakh people of West Bengal, who were fleeced by the Saradha and Rose Valley Groups, want to know where the money looted from them has gone,” Shah thundered adding “there was no industrial activity in Bengal to save chit fund business.” He was addressing a rally at Dumurjala in Howrah.
Taking a dig at the Chief Minister, Shah said “all over the world people know Mamata Banerjee as the Chief Minister of West Bengal but the people who are involved in chit fund business know her as a great painter or else why should have they purchased her paintings for croresIJ”
The Chief Minister was trying to befool the people of Bengal “but she should know that the people of Bengal are not fools. They know that the chit fund business is running in connivance with the Trinamool Congress.
Attacking Banerjee for hosting anti-national elements in Bengal the BJP president said “Trinamool people are involved where ever there is a bomb blast — from Khagragarh to Birbhum” adding the Bengal ruling party had turned the State into a safe haven for fake currency rackets and arms-dealers.
Shah said the world wanted to know “whether you (Banerjee) are the Chief Minister of the goons or the people of the State.”
Banerjee’s party was indulging in illegal infiltration and all kinds of underworld activities which was directly related to her vote bank politics, Shah said. Once again raking up the Malda issue the BJP president maintained “the Chief Minister has dismissed Malda violence as an issue between the locals and the BSF which is not true.”
Earlier Rajnath Singh had told a rally in North 24 Parganas how the State Government remained on a denial mode though what happened in Malda was part of a larger conspiracy. In Malda violent mobs belonging to a particular community had burnt down a police station and torched three dozen vehicles besides attacking members of other community.
Meanwhile, the Trinamool leadership immediately shot back even as its general secretary Partho Chatterjee said “with the advent of elections people have come to purchase votes by selling all kinds of tricks,” while the left and the Congress said “what Mr Shah said is a part of a friendly fight.”
If the BJP was so much concerned about Trinamool’s involvement with chit fund then “why the CBI is going slow on the top Trinamool leadersIJ” CPI(M)’s Md Salim said “as soon as the CBI tightened the screw on the Chief Minister she rushed to Delhi after which things were slowed down.”