2021 West Bengal Assembly elections will be held in presence of central forces: Dilip Ghosh

KOLKATA: West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh asserted on Saturday that the 2021 assembly elections in West Bengal will be held in the presence of central forces, not the state police.

Ghosh, who was addressing a party meeting at Mahisadal in Purbo Medinipur, said the ruling Trinamool Congress and the West Bengal police "connived" during the last panchayat and municipal polls in the district and elsewhere, and "prevented" voters to exercise their franchise.



"Not any more. The next assembly polls will not be conducted by Didi's (CM Mamata Banerjee) police," he said.

Pointing to his carbine-totting security on the podium, Ghosh said, "You will see such cops from Delhi, holding shining firearms before booths (in the 2021 polls). If TMC goons come to loot votes, they will be sent back in stretchers."

Recounting Banerjee and her party's resounding triumph in the 2011 elections, he said BJP will remove the TMC from power in next year's elections in the same manner as it had ousted the CPM nine years ago.

The senior BJP leader also mocked TMC lawmakers' visit to "to faraway Hathras" in Uttar Pradesh to show solidarity with the family of the Dalit woman who was allegedly gang- raped and died later.

"Has the CM (Banerjee) ever expressed concern for the brutalised women in her own backyard, the ones raped, murdered and physically abused? Never.

"Now, her MPs are enacting a drama in UP. They never visited the kins of murder and rape victims in their own constituencies, because it is the handiwork of their own men," Ghosh claimed.

A TMC delegation of three MPs was prevented from going to Hathras on Friday.

Alleging that women cannot come out of their homes after dusk in West Bengal, he further said, "What has Mamata Banerjee got to say about everyday incidents of molestation of women? She can only cast aspersions on the character of a raped woman as she had said in the Park Street case."

Ghosh also said that while senior police officers were suspended and the key accused arrested after the Hathras incident, in West Bengal, justice is denied to victims.

Earlier in the day, Banerjee took out a protest rally in the city against the "gang-rape" of the 19-year-old woman in UP.