West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday accused the Border Security Force of scaring voters in the border areas of the state at the “behest of saffron camp” and asked the police to keep a close watch on their activities. “Law and order is a state subject” and the Centre has no role in it, said the Trinamool Congress chief while addressing a panchayat election rally in the bordering Cooch Behar district of the state, as per a report by news agency PTI.
“I have information that some BSF officials are visiting the border areas, threatening voters and asking them not to vote. I will ask people not to be scared and fearlessly participate in the elections,” she said.
The Bengal CM referred to the alleged shooting of villagers by the BSF last year, whom the security force claimed as smugglers and said, “Police will lodge FIRs in such cases and the law will take its own course.”
Asserting that the TMC will defeat the BJP in the July 8 rural polls, Banerjee said, “We will then defeat the BJP at the Centre and bring a development-oriented government in the country.” Banerjee said the party had stressed on putting up candidates with a clean record in the elections.
“We will look after the panchayats and ensure that there is no corruption at the ground level,” she said, as per the report.
During the campaign, she also claimed that BJP wants to “sell” the country.
Referring to a commonly used term by the saffron party, she said “their double engines will soon vanish”.
“They will lose their first engine in the Panchayat Elections of the state and the second engine in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections...We are trying to do a "Maha Jota" (larger alliance) against BJP and it will be done soon,” she added.
Mamata Targets Congress, CPM
During her address, the TMC chief targeted Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) saying despite her efforts to form a grand opposition alliance against the BJP at the Centre, their actions as playing second fiddle to the saffron camp in the state are throwing a spanner in the efforts, as per the PTI report.
"We are trying to form a grand alliance (Mahajot) against the BJP at the Centre. But the CPI (M) and Congress are trying to work with the BJP in Bengal. I will break this unholy nexus in Bengal,” the TMC supremo said
Reacting to Banerjee's claim, West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the "credibility of the TMC in the fight against the BJP was always under a question mark.
"We all know the role that TMC had played in all these years in the fight against the BJP." Echoing Chowdhury, the CPI (M) said Banerjee should be the last person to lecture the Communists and the Congress on ways to fight against the BJP.