BJP national President Amit Shah on Saturday warned Mamata Banerjee and said that he would not take rest until he uprooted the Trinamool Congress from power in West Bengal. "My party colleagues often remind me that we are on our own, running government in 19 states. But I told them that our target would remain unfulfilled till we win West Bengal, the land of Tagore, Vivekananda, Subhash Chandra Bose, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and other luminaries," Shah told a huge rally in Kolkata.
Shah alleged that his address was not broadcasted in rural parts of Bengal as television channel links were snapped by cable TV providers after being pressurised by the West Bengal government. "But Mamataji, you cannot stop me from reaching people. You can snap links to television. But I will go to all districts of Bengal and uproot you with huge protests against you," Shah thundered.
Shah added that on his way from the Kolkata airport to Mayo Road, the venue of the rally, he saw banners by the Trinamool Congress that said the BJP was anti-Bengal. "How could that be when our party was constituted in Bengal? Our love for Bengal is not for vote but for development of Bengal."
During the rally, Shah assured BJP workers that his party would bring paribartan. And he moved the right card—Narendra Modi.
Instead of pushing a leader from the state, Shah called for a change of government in Bengal—from Mamata government to Modi government.
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Quoting government figures, he said Bengal's vikash has gone down from 25 per cent in 1947 to seven per cent during the Left Front rule and then to four per cent during the TMC rule.
However, it remained unclear what he meant by vikash. If he was refering to West Bengal's GDP growth, then his figure is likely to set off another controversy. Recently, West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra declared that the Union government had accepted the growth rate of West Bengal with 2011 as the base year, and this figure is around 10 per cent, higher than the national growth.
Shah claimed that Modi trippled allocations for Bengal and several lakhs of people got electricity connection, gas connection and loans under the PM Mudra Yojna. "But all the money went to nourish her partymen and dear nephew."
Shah also included famous poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, another Bengal luminary and a Muslim, into the list of BJP's favourite in Bengal. Shah said, "This is the land of Tagore, Subhash Chandra, Bankim Chandra, Vivekandaa, Shyama Prasad Mookherjee and of course, Kazi Nazrul Islam along many others. Unfortunately, their voices and words got replaced by the sounds of bullets and bombs. Give us an opportunity and we will bring back the lost cultural glory of Bengal." Mamata Banerjee had also taken Nazrul's name along with Tagore during the assembly election campaign in 2011.