West Bengal Election 2021: Amit Shah says central forces under EC control, Mamata blaming CAPF shows her frustration

Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah today slammed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee after she blamed central forces for intimidating voters and working on the behest of the Home Minister. He said that this shows Banerjee’s frustration over impending defeat in the Assembly elections.

“Didi is repeatedly alleging that the CAPF is disturbing the election at the behest of the Home Ministry. I want Didi to have some common-sense that when the CAPF is engaged in election work, then the Ministry of Home Affairs does not control them. At the time of elections, Para Military Forces are controlled by the Election Commission,” he said.

Shah claimed that the BJP had received unprecedented support in the first three-phase polls held on March 27, April 1 and 6. “According to an analysis by us, the BJP is winning anywhere around 63 to 68 seats in the 3 phases which were concluded recently,” he said.

“The Sonar Bangla Abhiyan will begin from Kolkata. Kolkata will remain the ‘City of Joy’ and we will also work to transform it into ‘City of Future’. We will make a Rs 22,000 crore Kolkata Development Fund for infrastructural strengthening.”

The Home Minister said that the way Mamata Banerjee has appealed to minority voters to come together and vote for the TMC shows that even the minority votes are drifting away from them. He said that appeals such as these aren’t good coming from a Chief Minister as well as the head of a party.

Amit Shah said that the continuing attack on the BJP workers and the party’s state president Dilip Ghosh and the TMC leaders’ silence on the issue show that they are quietly supporting the violence. He said that the people of Bengal are dejected with Mamata Banerjee’s failure to check infiltration, appeasement politics and also due to her stand against the CAA. “Several communities from every region of Bengal are supporting the BJP because of the failure of law and order under Mamata Banerjee’s government…The people of Bengal are against Didi because Modi ji brought the CAA law to give citizenship to the millions of refugees who have come to Bengal and she is opposing it,” he said.

Shah claimed that North Bengal has been ignored by the TMC for long. “They did not take care of Rajbanshis, Gorkhas and tea/tobacco plantations. We’ve decided to form a North Bengal Development Board for the region….We have come before the people of Bengal with a roadmap of what we will do for the development of Kolkata, North Bengal, for the culture of Bengal and the overall development of Bengal after we form a government in the state,” he said.

Amit Shah said that the BJP government, if voted to power, will invest Rs 2 lakh crore in rural infrastructure in Bengal under the Rural Advancement Mission. He said that they will invest Rs 30,000 crore in five years for the development of urban areas of West Bengal under the Ujjwal Bangla mission.