Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his election campaign in West Bengal with a scathing attack on both the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Left-Congress combine, accusing them of being in cahoots with each other. Announcing several projects, amounting to Rs 5,000 crore, for the State, Modi said the people of Bengal had already decided to remove the government. “You have made up your mind to remove the rule of the aunt and the nephew (a reference to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew, Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee),” he said at a rally at Haldia on February 7 .
The Prime Minister also alleged that there was a secret understanding between the Trinamool and the Left-Congress combine. “In Bengal our battle is with the Trinamool, but be careful of their secret friends…. You have heard of match-fixing in games, but now in the politics of Bengal, the Left, the Congress and the Trinamool are indulging in match-fixing behind the curtains. In Delhi, the Left, Congress and Trinamool hold meetings behind closed doors…. In Bengal the Left and the Trinamool just pretend to be fighting against each other. Voting for the Left and the Congress means falling prey to the game that is being played out behind the curtains,” said Modi.
Interestingly, clubbing the opposition together has been an old rhetoric in Mamata’s election speeches. She has all along alleged that the BJP and the Left and the Congress were in a conspiracy against her. Modi may also be aware that the Left-Congress combine has been relentless in its criticism of the BJP government at the Centre, and losing the votes it had once weaned away from the Left may lead to disastrous consequences in the upcoming election.
Directing his main attack on the Trinamool Congress government, Modi pointed to the lack of industrial development in the State saying, “How many factories were started in the last 10 years here? What happened to that big steel plant, which could not even get started because of the misrule in the State? The main reason behind West Bengal’s present situation is its politics.” Blaming the governments of the Congress and the Left Front for the lack of development in the State, Modi said, “In 2011, when Mamata gave out a call for parivartan (change), people were hopeful…. But it became clear within a year that it was not a parivartan , but a punarjivan (rebirth) of the Left… a rebirth of corruption, a rebirth of crimes and criminals, rebirth of violence, rebirth of the attack on democracy. As a result, poverty continued to increase in West Bengal.”
He alleged that while Mamata gets angry at the chant of ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’, she remains unperturbed when certain people badmouth the country. “You have seen how international conspiracies to tarnish India’s names are coming to the fore. There is this concerted effort to defame the country…. Have you heard Didi speaking out against these conspiracies and these efforts to malign the country?” said Modi.
In an attempt to appeal to the Bengalis’ love of football, Modi said, “Bengal is a football loving State, and so in football terminology I want to say, Trinamool has committed one foul after another – foul for misgovernance, foul for attacking the opposition, foul for looting the money of the people, foul for hurting the faith they placed [on the government]. The people of Bengal have seen all this and are now going to show Trinamool the Ram card.”
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