Shah for 2nd Parivartan in Bengal

BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday blew the poll bugle calling for a second Parivartan in Bengal the “foundation of which will be laid in 2019” by winning 23 out of 42 parliamentary seats from the State.

Addressing a huge rally in Purulia that hit national headlines last month — for an unprecedented saffron show in the panchayat elections and murder of three BJP workers allegedly by the TMC cadre in the immediate aftermath — Shah said violence, rampant corruption and syndicate raj were the hallmarks of the Mamata Banerjee regime that deserved to be defeated in 2019 general elections.

The BJP president said a time had come for the Mamata Government to be thrown out of power as it thrived only on corruption and violence.

“In the Panchayat elections which hardly throws any impact on the future of the State Government 1,341 people were injured, 20 killed and about 2 crore people were not allowed to vote by the TMC goons who gagged the voice of democracy throughout Bengal,” Shah said.

“The TMC thinks that they will continue to remain in power through violence. But I throw an open challenge to them from this rally that the sacrifices of our workers who were murdered by the TMC goons will not go in vain. Their blood will show its true colours and this Government will be thrown out of power —the process of which will begin in 2019,” he thundered.

Claiming that the Mamata Government had picked up from where the Marxists left by “destroying Bengal’s economy and polity even further,” Shah said, “when the CPI(M) Government went the State had a debt of Rs 2 lakh crore, but in the past seven years that debt has gone up to Rs 3.5 lakh crore.”

Accusing the ruling party with misappropriation of central funds sent by the Narendra Modi Government the BJP president said Centre had sent Rs 3.6 lakh crore for the development of the State “but most of that fund had been spent for the development of the Trinamool Congress goons and the syndicates run by it.”

Instead of the common man it were the sand mafia, coal mafia, cattle mafia, drug cartels and cross-border infiltrators who were developing, he said. “The development schemes of the Modi Government are not reaching the people because of the Trinamool Government and the goons that control it.”

Attacking the Chief Minister for trying to raise a grand alliance Shah said “Mamata didi is touring the country to raise the grand alliance but I will suggest her to mind her own State where the ground beneath her feat is slipping away fast.”

There was no industry in Bengal because of the faulty policy of the Mamata Government he said. “After the Independence Bengal accounted for the 25 percent of the national GDP growth but today it has come down to a mere 4 percent. This is because the entire industry has fled the State. The only industry that runs here is the one to make bombs,” he said.

Shah earlier arrived in Kolkata on Wednesday and held a series of meetings said Trinamool had ruined the Bengali culture which was once enriched by the likes of Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Tagore, Bankim Chandra, Sarat Chandra and Syama Prasad Mukherjee. “Today instead of Rabindra Sangeet you can only listen to bombs going off,” he said.

Reacting to the BJP chief Bengal Minister Firhad Hakim said his party was “not ready to listen about Tagore from a jungle because these people presided over Gujarat carnage.”

On the misuse of Central grants, State Finance Minister Amit Mitra said, “He is lying because most of the people-friendly projects have either been dropped or slashed by the Centre and we are forced to run them with our own resources.”