A day after Bengal Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari claimed that TMC chief Mamata Banerjee had called up Union Home Minister Amit Shah to help the Trinamool Congress get its national party status restored, the Chief Minister rejected his claims saying she would resign if he could prove his claims.
Not naming Adhikari, she said, “I do not want to provide extra importance to some upstart politicians who yesterday (Tuesday) claimed that I had called up his boss Shah in Delhi to get my party’s national status restored … I want to deny this as I had never made such calls and I challenge him (Adhikari) to prove his claims … if it is proved then I will quit my post.”
Adhikari responded saying he had all the evidence and would do so shortly insisting once again the Chief Minister had called up the Home Minister through landline not once but on four occasions.
“The Chief Minister criticises Amit Shah ji in public but in private she calls him up for favours as she did yesterday (Monday) by calling him up on four occasions --- literally holding his feet over telephone--- requesting him to get the Trinamool Congress’ national party status restored,” Adhikari had said from a rally at Singur in Hooghly district. According to sources in the TMC, the party would send a legal notice to Adhikari on the Singur speech. The copy of the notice was also likely to be sent to the Home Minister, sources said.
Lambasting the BJP and apparently targeting the saffron party’s national leadership, including Shah, the Chief Minister on Wednesday told partly in Hindi and partly in Bengali how a conspiracy was hatched to demote the TMC for ulterior purposes.
“Earlier the system was to review a party’s national system every ten years and accordingly our status should have been reviewed in 2026 or 2024 in the least as we got national status in 2016 … but now suddenly things were changed and the BJP using its power” de-listed the TMC, Mamata said insisting “the name of our party was All India Trinamool Congress and it will continue to be so.”
Mamata, who had a couple of days ago demanded the resignation of Shah for conspiring to “undemocratically and illegally topple an elected Government despite himself holding a constitutional post,” on Wednesday renewed her attack on the BJP calling it the “most corrupt party.
She had on Monday demanded Shah’s resignation wondering how a Union Minister like Shah could conspire to topple a democratically elected State Government. Shah had earlier told a BJP rally at Birbhum that the TMC would not last its full tenure till 2026 as after getting routed in the 2024 general elections the Bengal ruling party would collapse on its own and would not last its full term till 2026.
Alleging that the BJP was using its power to control the Election Commission of India, Mamata on Wednesday said, “They are dividing the people in the name of religion and putting the country on fire by inciting riots … they are destroying the federal structure of the country” and when the Opposition parties were trying to protest they were being framed in false cases.
In an apparent reference to recent arrest of several TMC legislators including Ministers and senior party functionaries on charges of corruption, Mamata said, “They are trying to browbeat me … let them arrest all of us … let them arrest my family members but I will not bow before them,” adding in any case the BJP will not be able to retain power in the Centre.
“They will be wiped out in 2024 … they will not be able to get even 200 seats,” Mamata said. When asked whether like other opposition leaders she too suspected manipulation of electronic voting machines and whether she too would demand return of ballot papers Mamata said she would rather prefer VVPAT for all the EVMs.
