A day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled virtual meeting with the chief ministers to discuss the fuel situation amid the ongoing West Asia conflict, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata on Thursday expressed apprehension of a possible lockdown in the country and said that it would not deter her or her party from fighting the BJP in the Assembly election in the state.
“They might impose a lockdown. They will keep people confined to their homes. I fought through the lockdown situation in 2021. I can fight in any given situation,” the TMC supremo said, referring to the 2021 Assembly election in the state that was held during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Campaigning for the TMC candidate, Narendranath Chakraborty, in the Pandaveswar Assembly segment in Paschim Bardhaman district, the TMC chief spoke about the shortage of LPG cylinders in the country.
“Yesterday, I strongly protested against the fact that people will receive an LPG cooking cylinder, 35 days after booking it. Now they are saying that the period is 25 days. I don’t trust them a bit. What will one do for 25 days if he or she runs out of cooking gas? People are being forced to resort to primitive ways of cooking and transportation. Before PM Modi came to power, a domestic cylinder cost Rs 400. Today, it is Rs 1,100. The price of petrol has increased. An alert has been given. Are they planning another lockdown? Do you[BJP] want to lock people inside their homes? In 2021, we fought with all our might when there was a lockdown due to Covid-19. If we can fight in that situation, we can combat any situation,” Mamata said.
The chief ministers of poll-bound states of West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala are not invited to the PM’s Friday meeting on fuel supply.
Reiterating her charge of an Election Commission-BJP nexus in deleting genuine voters’ names during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, she said, “They (BJP) had said that they would delete 1.20 crore names. 58 lakh were deleted in the first phase. Then, in the name of logical discrepancy, they put around 60 lakh people under adjudication. If you add 58 lakh and 60 lakh, you would see that they have almost achieved their target of 1.20 crore. It means that the SIR was planned at the BJP party office. They have targeted seats where TMC won last time.”
“They (BJP) execute their sinister plans at the late hours of the night. BJP is a washing machine with powers to vanish. They have thrown the voters into their washing machine to delete their names from the voters’ list in the guise of SIR. They are taking away the rights of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, SCs, and STs,” she added.
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Questioning the EC for not releasing the list of voters deletions following the release of a supplementary list, less than a month before the polling in the state, she said, “We demand the list to be displayed immediately. People who have been wrongfully deleted will then get the chance to appeal before the tribunal as per the Supreme Court’s order. I would urge my party workers to get in touch with such people. They will be provided free legal help.”
The TMC supremo said that more names would have been deleted if her party had not fought against the SIR from the streets to the courts.
“It is to our credit if 29 to 30 lakh of the over 60 lakh names under adjudication find themselves in the list… It is because of our campaign and fight that these names would be on the list. But I want 100 per cent names to appear on the list as they are all genuine voters,” she said, adding TMC’s lawyers will help those not on the list fight their cases before the tribunals set up for the purpose.
She said that TMC’s camps will be set up in every locality to assist those whose names would not appear in the final voter list.
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Warning against violence on the polling day, the chief minister said, “If anyone tries to apply force on the day of polling or counting, then you should unite and come forward. We want things to happen peacefully. But one-party rule will not be accepted. You [EC] can’t act on the instructions of the BJP,” she said, claiming that the BJP government at the Centre would fall by August or September this year. “Then I will see what happens to those who are acting like BJP agents and taking away people’s voting rights. I will not do anything. But they will naturally receive the rewards of their misdeeds,” she said.
Meanwhile, TMC general secretary and heir apparent, Abhishek Banerjee, accused the BJP government at the Centre of conspiring against the country’s bona fide citizens by deleting their names from the electoral rolls under the pretext of the SIR exercise.
Canvassing for TMC candidate Nirmal Chandra Roy at a rally in Jalpaiguri district’s Dhupguri, he also charged the BJP with indulging in politics on the basis of religion and diverting people’s attention from core issues of livelihood and housing.
“In the name of SIR, those living here for a hundred years are being forced to give proof of their citizenship. “Even elderly people are being asked to stand in queues for hours, just to see their names either deleted (from the electoral rolls) or under adjudication,” the TMC No.2 leader said.
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“The BJP is doing whatever they want. But we won’t allow them to commit such atrocities on the public. This country belongs to everyone. This battle is to protect the soil of Bengal,” he said.
At another meeting in Kalchini, he held Union Home Minister Amit Shah responsible for “failing to protect the lives of 26 tourists last year (at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir).” He asked why Shah or Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not resign over the tragedy, as terrorists from across the border came and sprayed bullets on civilians without being detected by the security forces.
