West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee outside UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s residence in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Photo: Anil Sharma)
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday evening met Congress president Rahul Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi at the latter’s residence where they discussed the 2019 general elections and the NRC issue.
“I have invited them to come to Kolkata on January 19. We have a long relationship with Sonia Gandhi. We discussed NRC. We have had very good talks, we will take on the BJP together, we will field candidates wherever each one of us are strong, so that there is a one-on-one fight with BJP. Who will become prime minister is not important, I am just a worker. The goal is to defeat BJP. We will discuss about the prime minister (candidate) when the time comes,” Mamata said after the meeting.
Mamata said that NRC is “insulting” to Bangladesh, a neighbour with whom India has excellent relations. She said the government would have labelled her an infiltrator too had her family been from Bangladesh, as lakhs of people from the country came to West Bengal at the time of Partition.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met with UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi at 10 Janpath in New Delhi. (Source: INC Twitter handle)
“I do not have documents to show that my family has been in West Bengal from before 1971. How will I, when I do not even know the birthdays of my parents. Thankfully my family is not from Bangladesh. Had it been so this government would have labelled me as an infiltrator too,” Mamata said between meetings with leaders from several parties at the Trinamool party office in Parliament.
“This (NRC) is insulting to Bangladesh. It is a neighbour with whom we have very good relations. They are a legitimate sovereign nation, not a terrorist country… Of all the people that came from that country, may be 1 per cent are infiltrators,” she said.
Trinamool is organising a meeting in Kolkata on January 19 as a show of opposition unity. Asked whether Trinamool would ally with the Congress in West Bengal, she retorted: “Forget about Bengal, think of the country.”
Refusing to respond to BJP accusations against her, she said the party is nervous about 2019. Countering the BJP’s charge that she was doing politics of votebank, she said that it was the BJP that has precipitated a global crisis by excluding 40 lakh people.
She denied the charge made by the NRC coordinator that West Bengal had failed to verify the names sent to it from Assam. “That is not true,” she said.