Mamata Banerjee and Biju Janata Dal-led governments incapable: Amit Shah

BHUBANESWAR/KOLKATA: BJP President Amit Shah, who was on a visit to West Bengal and Odisha, accused both the Mamata Banerjee and Biju Janata Dal-led governments of being incapable of fully tapping the resources of their respective states.

Raking up the case of Mamata Banerjee’s paintings while addressing a public rally in East Midnapore district, Shah said only the BJP could bring justice to the people who were cheated by the fake deposit-taking companies.

“Mamata di has a special quality. She can go on painting. Her paintings are even more expensive than the works by several noted artists. And who buys her paintings? The owners of the chit fund companies bought her paintings spending crores. From where did they get this money?...By duping lakhs of poor depositors. So, Mamata didi cannot bring justice to the people who were cheated. We have a clean mind and we will bring justice to you in this case,” Shah said.


“Mamata didi, in her manifesto in 2011, said she would open all the 55,000 factories which were shut down during the Left regime? How many factories were opened? She however opened factories for bomb-making,” Shah said.

Banerjee’s government has been creating problems in all the programmes taken up by the BJP and obstructing public rallies by not allowing VIP choppers to land or denying permission for the venues, he said. “The government is trying to stop BJP from reaching the people. But, the more she tries to stop us by unfair means, the more our Karyakartas will go to the doors of people in Bengal.”

While addressing a rally in Malda, he said the Citizenship Amendment Bill would become a key issue in Bengal. Following the Rath Yatra setback, the BJP has decided to hold a similar number of public rallies as they planned to do for the yatra and get their star campaigners including PM Modi, Amit Shah, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, former MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and other national leaders to address these rallies. The BJP has planned at least 16 rallies in a week by the leaders across the state.

MEET IN ODISHA
Addressing karyakartas near Salepur, Odisha, on Tuesday, Shah said the Congress and the Biju Janata Dal were too sides of the same coin and that neither would do anything for Odisha’s development.

“Both have governed Odisha. When the Congress was in power, Odisha was poor. The BJD has been in power for 19 years and Odisha remains poor... The 2019 mandate is clear, Narendra Modi will lead the BJP to victory with a majority,” he said.

Political compulsions require Patnaik’s BJD to avoid a pre-poll alliance with both the national parties in the state and general elections which will be held simultaneously. This means four-time CM Naveen Patnaik will maintain “equidistance” from the NDA and Mahagathbandhan.

Shah’s visit comes just days after Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s, who described Patnaik as the “junior partner” of the prime minister. Addressing booth-level cadres from four Lok Sabha constituencies –– Cuttack, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapar –– at Kulia near Cuttack, Shah seemed less harsh than he had been in the past in his criticism of Patnaik. Despite being a mineral-rich state, and while labourers from Odisha supported industrial production whether in Gujarat or Haryana, Odisha itself was being denied its potential, he said.

Shah is expected to return to meet tribals in Puri on February 3. Shah reminded tribal voters of the pro-tribal initiatives of the Modi government, including the creation of the District Mineral Fund which taxed miners’ profits to benefit local tribals and had already fetched the state Rs 4,000 crore.