Mamata urges Opposition to form joint platform against BJP

After facing a drubbing in the juts concluded assembly elections, former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday appealed to all Opposition parties to come together to form a “joint platform” to fight the BJP, which came to power in the state after the recently held Assembly elections.

Announcing for a new journey for TMC on the occasion of Tagore’s birth anniversary, Mamata called upon the student unions of various affiliations opposed to the BJP and the NGOs and other stakeholders to unite against the BJP.

“I call upon all opposition parties, including the Leftists and the ultra-Left, to come together to form a joint platform against the BJP,” the TMC supremo said on a day when the BJP’s first government in the State was sworn in. TMC will now sit in opposition in the West Bengal assembly after remaining in power for 15 years since 2011.

The TMC chief said that she will talk with any political party if they want to hold a dialogue with her in this regard. “It is not the time to think the enemy’s enemy is my friend, our first enemy is the BJP,” she said, while addressing a small gathering in front of her Kalighat residence, while observing poet Rabindranath Tagore’s birth anniversary.

She claimed that atrocities were being committed against TMC workers and supporters across the state following the declaration of the assembly election results. “Hooliganism is going on at places, bad elements have entered their (BJP) ranks,” Mamata said as she claimed she did not allow atrocities against anyone after coming to power in 2011.

Stating that leaders of all opposition parties contacted her after the Bengal poll results were declared, Mamata said, “Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and party president Mallikarjun Kharge spoke to me.”

Expressing gratitude to all of them, she said that other leaders like Shiv Sena UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray and RJD’s Tejaswi Yadav sent messages to her, while SP leader Akhilesh Yadav came to Kolkata and met her following the results.

Banerjee said that Congress leaders and advocates Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and TMC Rajya Sabha MP Menaka Guruswamy, who represented the TMC government in various matters before the Supreme Court as well in the Calcutta High Court, spoke to her over the phone to express their solidarity. “I am also a senior advocate enrolled in the Calcutta High Court Bar Association and the Bar Council of West Bengal,” she said.