PM Modi turns up heat on TMC in final campaign push

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday mounted an aggressive attack on the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), accusing the Mamata Banerjee-led party of betraying its founding slogan of “Maa, Mati, Manush” (mother, motherland and people) and presiding over what he described as a collapse of governance in West Bengal.

The Prime Minister also warned all infiltrators to leave the country before April 29, the date for the last phase of polls, else “they will be thrown out after May 4 when the results are published”.

On the penultimate day of campaigning for the second phase of assembly polls in the State, and perhaps PM’s last in the State for assembly polls, Modi also offered prayers at the main shrine of the politically influential Matua community in Thakunagar and at the historic Thanthania Kali temple. He bought puja offerings from one of the nearby stalls and offered it to the temple’s presiding deity, Maa Siddheshwari, a form of Goddess Kali, as people jostled to catch a glimpse of the prime minister.

Prime Minister also took part in a colourful roadshow in north Kolkata as the BJP intensified its campaign ahead of the second and final phase of the West Bengal assembly polls.

At a rally in Bongaon, Modi said TMC has “stopped talking” about ‘Ma Mati Manush’, the party’s slogan when it assumed power 15 years ago, because doing so “will expose the sins they committed in Bengal”, Modi alleged.

“While Ma (mother) is now in tears, Mati (land) has been handed over to syndicates and infiltrators and Manush (people) have been forced to leave the state in search of job opportunities elsewhere,” he said.

Modi also alleged that even the smallest of politicians as well as goons consider themselves the Government under the Trinamool Congress regime in Bengal. “The TMC’s ‘nirmam sarkar’ (cruel Government) stands with goons who torture women of this state. The time has now come to say we will tolerate no more,” he said. “Miscreants who rape and torture women will be brought to justice after May 4 (day of the assembly poll results) by the new BJP Government of Bengal,” the PM asserted.

Modi accused the Mamata Banerjee dispensation of gross inaction in cases involving trafficking of women from the state, and stated that the BJP Government would stand for women’s empowerment every step of their way.

The Prime Minister also alluded to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s iconic pre-Independence slogan of ‘Give me blood and I will give you freedom’, to urge the people to vote for the BJP, “… and I will grant you freedom from TMC’s ‘maha jungleraj’”.

In his second public address of the day at Arambag, Modi alleged the TMC-led Government in West Bengal is not run from the state secretariat but by the goons and criminals sheltered by the party.

“The TMC’s ‘nirmam (cruel) sarkar’ doesn’t run from the Nabanna (state secretariat). It is run by goons and criminals, requiring the intervention of the high court and the country’s apex court to bring the Government back on track,” Modi said.

He promised that the first Cabinet meeting of a BJP Government in the state will give its nod to the implementation of the Centre’s flagship health insurance programme, Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana.