A Katappa would cut them to size if Bengal’s ruling bahubalis did not mend their ways. A similar warning came from Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh for Trinamool Congress musclemen who have allegedly played a big role in the outfit’s successive wins since 2014.
Ghosh, who had earlier warned the Trinamool, saying, “We are not Marxists to enter the rat-holes,” told an election crowd at Pujali a small municipality in Howrah district that the “Bahubalis of the Trinamool Congress should better come back to senses for the Ministers and senior leaders on whom they rely for their criminal activities would not sustain them for long.”
Ghosh was addressing a meeting at Pujali where municipal elections will be held along with six other civic boards on May 14. Elections will be held in Kurseong, Darjeeling Mirik, Kalimpong (in the Hills of North Bengal), Pujali in South 24-Parganas district, Raigunj in North Dinajpur district and Domkal in Murshidabad district.
Making it clear that senior Trinamool leaders, including Ministers and MPs would soon go to jail as “papers are being readied and evidences collected” against them in various corruption cases. “In six months’ time the situation could change upside down. Your (the musclemen) protectors may not be there to shield you. So you should better mend your ways from now. Don’t scare the voters.”
Warning the Trinamool goons that they were being watched he said, “don’t think that the police administration can save you because after your bosses go to jail you will be hounded out. We will catch you even if you have fled your houses. We will get you from wherever you have fled.”
Reacting sharply to Ghosh’s statements
Bengal Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim said “as they are in power in Delhi, the BJP is trying to scare the Trinamool workers, which is undemocratic.”
At least a dozen senior Trinamool Congress leaders including Hakim and a number of his Ministerial colleagues are facing CBI and ED probe in the Narada pay-off case apart from cases related to chit fund scam.
Meanwhile, sources said a steady rise in BJP’s political graph has forced the Mamata Banerjee Government to postpone elections to five municipalities. Polls to Durgapur, Dhupguri, Nalhati, Panshkura and Haldia municipalities were to be held in the month of June.
The Government has decided to ignore the proposals sent in by the State Election Commission, said sources, adding there were plans to appoint administrators to the five municipalities which were to go to polls.
Though sephological surveys put the Trinamool ahead in all the municipalities what has been alarming for the ruling outfit is a steady rise of the BJP displacing the left at least in the urban areas thus making the saffron party a strong contender for power in the State.
“An increase in vote percentage would naturally put the BJP on the high leading the party to apply further such divisive tactic as armed Ramnavami processions which paid them good dividend in the South Contai Assembly by-elections where they displaced the CPI(M) to win the second position,” said a Minister and Trinamool MlA from Kolkata adding it was the need of the hour to “de-communalise Bengal and prepare the right situation for voting.”