BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday came, saw and conquered a politically significant chunk of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s home constituency at Bhawanipore where he called upon a huge gathering of have-nots to pull off a second parivartan by overthrowing the oppressive Trinamool Congress.
Shah, who, later in the evening, enthralled a select section of Kolkata intelligentsia at the historic Mahajati Sadan by upholding the BJP as the only ideology-driven outfit with policies that transcend classes and percolate the lowest level in real sense, said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chariot will appear in the horizon with a message of victory and the BJP cadres will team up with the people of Bengal to herald a second political change by gifting maximum number of MPs to the saffron outfit.”
The narrow, dingy Chetla lock gate slum of Ward No. 82 which has little more than 900 votes but gleefully accommodated a crowd five times bigger cheered Shah all through even as he visited sloping shanties by the Aadi Ganga that is no more than a sewerage canal sharing fruits, sweets and tea served in kullhar with subaltern voters.
The area being barely a mile from the Chief Minister’s Kalighat residence and a stone’s throw from the State Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim makes things difficult for rebel voices.
But the simple size of the crowd tended to say it all even as a defiant booth-level worker said, “CPI(M) gave the locals dry class consciousness, Mamata gave them electricity and now they want job, food and security from the TMC goons and are looking up to the BJP with great expectations.”
Shah who also walked up to the local Railway siding area attacked Banerjee for his appeasement politics saying “Instead of planning inclusive development, Mamata believes in appeasement politics which was one reason why lotus (BJP’s symbol) will bloom more vigorously in Bengal.”
later, delivering a spirited speech before the Kolkata civil society Shah said “Out of 1,650 odd outfits, BJP is the only ideology-driven party in the country which has internal democracy and where the booth-level workers like me do not have to depend upon the benevolence of the superior but on hard work to rise up the ladder.”
Taking a dig at the Congress and the Trinamool he said, “Everyone knows who will be the president of Congress or Trinamool after Sonia Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee,” and added that only in the BJP, elections were held every three years from booth level to the national level and no one was allowed to retain a post for more than two terms.
literally censoring Nehruvian era for importing westernism in policy decisions Shah said “Nehruvian policies were influenced by the western culture but Jan Sangh provided an alternate ideological platform that spoke of cultural nationalism. Though we were laughed off then, though we had limited number of followers then ,we stuck to our principles and today it is for everyone to see which ideology has prevailed.”
Distinguishing Modi era from the one led by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when ‘the will of everyone other than the Prime Minister prevailed’, Shah said “During Modi era India has got back its lost glory worldwide. In 2011 India was least respected State but today our Prime Minister is welcomed in all the country wherever he goes.”
This was because the Government has evolved policies that had put India on firm footing. “From surgical strike against terrorists in Pakistan to demonetisation to persuading the rich from leaving their subsidy in cooking gas to saving the people’s shame by constructing toilets all over the country, BJP had formulated policies that were long overdue. It is not for nothing that India is the fastest growing economy. We have pulled the growth rate up from 4.4 percent to 7.7 per cent,” he said.
Attacking the Mamata Government for failing to take advantage of Central policies, he said “Other States like Gujarat, Rajasthan, MP, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh were taking advantage of the Central schemes but Bengal is lagging behind. It is for Mamata Banerjee to answer why her regime is producing more bombs than jobs.”
Advocating Prime Minister Modi’s approach on balanced growth he said “Today the western part of the country is hugely developed whereas the eastern part like Bihar, Bengal, Odisha are lagging behind. This is why Modiji advocated balanced growth as the country cannot progress without all the States doing so simultaneously.”
Earlier, at a press conference Shah iterated no excess would be tolerated against the cow vigilantes adding actions were being taken against them.
On Mamata Banerjee, he said the Chief Minister was suffering from a BJP phobia. “Earlier she was not even prepared to recognise the BJP, but now that she is criticising us means that she is aware that the BJP has arrived in Bengal.”