Give us 35+ Lok Sabha MPs from Bengal, TMC rule will end before 2025: Amit Shah
Kolkata: Kickstarting his Lok Sabha election campaign in West Bengal, Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday set the BJP the task of winning 35-plus seats out of the 42 from the state in 2024. The BJP had won 18 seats in 2019, and Shah has set the party the target of doubling its tally.
Shah asserted that if the target was achieved, the Trinamul Congress (TMC) government also fall before 2025; state elections are due in 2026. The Trinamul doubted his target and accused him of threatening to dislodge an elected government.
Shah, who embarked on a two-day visit on the eve of the Bengali New Year, told a 'Jan Sampark Samavesh' at Suri in Birbhum, "Give us 35-plus seats in 2024 and make Narendra Modi the Prime Minister again. If you can do it, I can tell you of no need for 2025 because Mamata Didi's government will collapse before that."
The Union home minister also compared the Trinamul supremo's rule with that of German dictator Adolf Hitler and accused her of sponsoring the Sri Rama Navami violence in Howrah and Hooghly for her politics of appeasement.
Shah accused Mamata Banerjee of planning to make her MP-nephew Abhishek Banerjee the Chief Minister to establish 'parivarwad (dynastic rule),’ which the BJP had abolished in most parts of the country.
In yet another vow, the Union home minister said that the central agencies' crackdown in cases of corruption and scams would continue against the Trinamul leaders over their role in graft.
He said that though arrested TMC leader Anubrata Mondal was behind bars in a cattle smuggling scam, he still held the post of the party’s Birbhum district chief.
Calling Shah's rally a "flop," TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh alleged, "He made some undemocratic and autocratic comments like getting 35 seats. In 2021 Assembly polls also, he had claimed the BJP will get 200 seats here! Let him think about starting from zero first, instead of 35 seats. BJP will have to toil hard even to win a single seat next year."
The former Rajya Sabha MP said, "Most importantly, Shah dared to dislodge our government before 2025. This is a direct threat by a Union home minister. What is its relation with Lok Sabha polls? This only shows the BJP's hatred and conspiracy against Bengal. The cat is out of the bag!"
