West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has once again looked up to Nandigram for a slice of political luck and as an apparent strategy to blunt the impact of the defection of her erstwhile spearhead, Suvendu Adhikari, a powerful mass leader of the region.
Mamata on Monday told a huge rally at the “ground zero” of what they call Trinamool’s “farm revolution” that she was more than eager to contest from the place as this was a lucky ground for her.
“I will fight from Nandigram… Rather I will fight both from Nandigram and Bhawanipore… My soul has told me that this place is lucky for me… it is a holy place… and that I should fight from Nandigram… I have always started my campaign for the Assembly polls from this place,” Mamata said once again attacking the “turncoats” who quit the TMC before elections and vowing once again not to let the BJP capture Bengal.
“You may win many elections, you may become all powerful, you may be the Prime Minister of India and you may rule the world but I vow from this holy land of Nandigram that I will never allow the BJP to enter Bengal,” Mamata said, adding how some people were quitting the party as “all these years they have earned huge black money which they want to save.”
Mamata’s sharp attack received an equally high-decibel reply from Adhikari, who led a road-show down SP Mukherjee Road, past Banerjee’s Kalighat residence. He at once took up the challenge welcoming the TMC supremo at Nandigram and pre-declared the result: a “hands down” defeat for the Chief Minister.
“I welcome her to Nandigram… which catapulted her to power and which she remembered after five years… Let her contest from Nandigram and if I am fielded by my party there I take a vow today that if I cannot defeat her by a margin of half-a-lakh votes then I will quit politics,” Adhikari said.
Attacking the BJP Government for taking in such corrupt people into its fold, Mamata said, “They are threatening the corrupt leaders from other party with jail and forcing them to join them before the elections … is it as though that if you are in other party you are a thief and as soon as you join the BJP you are clean … as if BJP is a washing machine.”
With more and more number of corrupt people joining its ranks the BJP had become “washing machine Bha Ja Pa (read Bharatiya Janata Party) …but people have understood everything and they will teach you a lesson this time,” she added.
Nandigram is also the home turf of Mamata’s erstwhile spearhead, Suvendu Adhikari a powerful mass leader and a former Minister who quit the TMC and joined the BJP last month. Adhikari, the local MLA is also the son of Sisir Adhikari a veteran Congress and later TMC leader and a former Union Minister and a sitting MP.
Suvendu’s younger brother Dibyendu who too is an MP and his another brother a municipal chairman afford the Adhikari house at Contai in East Midnapore the status of 10 Downing Street, people say.
Mamata’s sharp attack received an equally high-decibel reply from Suvendu who led a triumphant roadshow down SP Mukherjee Road, past Mamata’s Kalighat residence. He at once took up the challenge welcoming the TMC supremo at Nandigram and pre-declared the result: a “hands down” defeat for the Chief Minister.
“I welcome her to Nandigram… which catapulted her to power and which she remembered after five years… Let her contest from Nandigram and if I am fielded by my party from there I take a vow today that if I cannot defeat her by a margin of half-a-lakh votes then I will quit politics,” Suvendu said.
Alleging that Mamata only remembers Nandigram before elections, and accusing her of giving repeated extensions to an IPS officer involved in the Nandigram firing, Suvendu said “she (Mamata) is playing with the sentiments of the people of Nandigram… but this time such a tactic will not work and her party will be democratically dumped into the Bay of Bengal.”
State BJP president Dilip Ghosh who accompanied Suvendu in the rally said Mamata was so afraid of a defeat at her home turf that she is escaping to Nandigram but there too she will face a humiliating defeat.