Mamata brings 23 parties together for mega rally in Kolkata

The United India rally called by Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee turned out to be a huge success even as top national leaders of about 23 outfits on Saturday assembled at the historic Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata to give out the “oust Narendra Modi” call; yet quite prudently putting the contentious prime ministerial issue on the backburner.

In what turned out to be this season’s first mega election jamboree, two million-plus people witnessed the Chief Minister successfully galvanising the anti-BJP-anti-Narendra Modi sentiments reminding how the Prime Minister had in his “fit of power and conceit” spared none and victimised all before warning: The payback time had arrived.

“Instead of working for the people, you victimised the senior leaders who opposed you. You did this to Lalu Yadavji, you did this to Mayawatiji, you did this to Akhilesh Yadavji, Soniaji and you are trying to do this to me. You spared none. But now time has come when we will not spare you,” Mamata thundered stopping short of naming Modi from the teeming rally largely construed as TMC’s show of muscle even as the who’s who on the dais nodded in agreement.

Calling the rally a “historical compulsion and not a mere political exercise”, the Chief Minister said “this rally is to bring a change. From this rally I assure you all that the BJP will be allowed to win not a single seat from this State.”

The Prime Minister thought that all but him was corrupt, Mamata said and added how the institutions like RBI, CBI, banks had been subverted and how Jan Dhan, note ban, GST et al had been a big scandal deserving probe.

Accusing the Prime Minister of running a super emergency more vicious than the one India experienced under Indira Gandhi, Mamata said the Modi Government was so full of arrogance that it would not even honour its own senior leaders.

She said, “The Modi Government is past its expiry date and in the coming days, a new dawn will descend. We will work together and it’s a promise. Who will be the Prime Minister can be decided after the Lok Sabha elections,” raising the slogan “Badal do, badal do, Delhi ka sarkar badal do” (change the Government at the Centre).”

Let alone those from other parties “they would not even show respect to their own leaders like Sushma Swaraj, Yashwant Sinha, Shatrughna Sinha, Arun Shourie,” Mamata said moments after the Bollywood actor-turned BJP MP Sinha said “the NDA regime led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an instance of democracy in its zenith and the one run by the present incumbent (Modi) is an autocracy.”

Attacking the Prime Minister for his ruthless and sudden imposition of demonetisation and mindless application of GST that had suffered 367 amendments, the Bihari Babu said, “These were never the decision of the party because had it been so then senior leaders like LK Advani, MM Joshi or for that matter Arun Shourie would have been in the know of it. In fact one wonders whether the Finance Minister (Arun Jaitley) knew about it or not.”

“The result was large-scale loss of jobs and direct slump in agriculture and industry causing Indian economy a loss of thousands of crores,” he added.

In an attack laced with no less venom, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal said how “the Prime Minister follows those people on the Twitter who are abusive of women.” Saying that what Pakistan could not do to India in past seven decades the BJP Government had done in five years, Kejriwal said, “This Government has divided India along religious lines and set each community against the other so that their failures can be overlooked.”

He reminded how farmers were not getting from farm insurance and committing suicides after crop failures whereas the insurance companies friendly to the Prime Minister were minting money in crores.