In what is being viewed as an observation directed at a section of “ambitious” people in her own party as also eager not to keep her backyard politically unsecured, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday declared her wish to stay put in her own State.
Curiously her statement comes barely a day after Gandhian activist Anna Hazare endorsed her probable candidature for the prime ministerial chair. Writer, Mahasweta Devi and a Muslim cleric from Kolkata had also expressed a similar desire at a recent rally.
“I am not going anywhere. I am going to stay back in Bengal,” Banerjee thundered at a party meeting at Durgapur adding her only wish was to control the affairs in Delhi. “More seats we win the more we will be able to make our presence felt in Delhi,” she said adding her party would contest polls throughout North-East, and other parts of India.
“We will fight from the North-East, we will put up our candidates in Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, even Delhi and many other States which I am not mentioning now,” she said adding her fight was against the left, Congress and the BJP alike. Taking a dig at BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for interacting with the people of the country through video-conferencing programme called Chai Pe Charcha, Banerjee said such discussions over tea cups should take place throughout the year and not just before elections.
“We discuss over tea cups throughout the year and not before the elections like others do and so we are so near the people,” she said. Insisting that the BJP’s politics was of fragile nature where “only the leaders and the people have no role to play”, Banerjee said her party “detests opportunistic politics.” Referring to Modi’s speech at a Kolkata rally where he said Mamata would serve the people of Bengal from Kolkata and he would serve them from Delhi, the Chief Minister said, “such type of statements are part of a bigger drama being played throughout the country.”
Saying that her party was “not so rich like the BJP or the Congress to let lose huge propaganda machinery”, Banerjee said she would personally appeal to the people for voting for her party.
Curiously in her speech there was hardly any mention of Anna Hazare with whom she was likely to hold a meeting a few days from now and with whom she was likely to campaign in six States.
Reacting to Banerjee’s insistence on her staying in Bengal, a senior Trinamool leader who was not present in the meeting later said the Chief Minister was increasingly getting suspicious of a few leaders who were getting ambitious about usurping the chief ministerial chair in Kolkata after she left for Delhi.