PM Modi steps up attack on Mamata Banerjee, asks if TMC will unleash goons on judges
PM Modi steps up attack on Mamata Banerjee, asks if TMC will unleash goons on judges
M.U.H
29/05/2024183
KOLKATA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday hammered the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for its attacks over the Calcutta high court verdict on scrapping of other backward class (OBC) certificates awarded to 77 communities since 2010 in West Bengal, accusing the ruling party in West Bengal of trying to throttle the judiciary.
“I was taken aback. Questions are now being raised about the intention of the judges and the judiciary. I want to ask the TMC whether they would now unleash its goons on the judges. The entire nation is seeing how the TMC is throttling the judiciary,” Modi said at a rally in North 24 Parganas, referring to the high court’s May 22 order scrapping the OBC certificates.
PM Modi, who led the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) offensive against Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday, addressed two election meetings at Barasat and Jadavpur and conducted a road show in north Kolkata
In his speeches, PM Modi mounted sharp attacks on the TMC on multiple fronts including its alleged politics of appeasement, corruption, opposition to CAA, the purported assault on women in Sandeshkhali and recent attacks on monks of the religious and welfare organisations.
“The Trinamool has started abusing Hindu monks and seers. Ramakrishna Mission, ISKCON and Bharat Sevashram Sangha are respected all over the world. But TMC has started abusing them to carry forward its agenda of vote jihad,” PM Modi said, escalating his attack on the TMC in the runup to the last phase of voting on Saturday.
At the Jadavpur rally, Modi asked people to vote BJP and not waste their votes on anyone else. “Ask 100 people which government is coming to power, 90 would tell you that the Modi government is coming. If it is certain that Modi government is coming to power, why waste votes? Your votes should be used to strengthen the government at the Centre.”
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who had refused to accept the Calcutta high court order and declared that her government would appeal against the ruling, had also alleged that some judges were following the BJP’s diktats.
Banerjee, who also conducted two road shows in Dum Dum and North Kolkata apart from addressing an election rally at Behala in the Kolkata South constituency, did not attribute motives to the judges on Tuesday but she reiterated her opposition to the court ruling.
“A few days back 1.5 million OBC certificates were scrapped. I don’t accept this order. I am a lawyer too. I can’t say anything against judges but I can speak against the judgment,” Banerjee said
She also stepped up her pitch against PM Modi, saying he had promised to come down heavily on corruption but had ended up “selling out the entire country. “He said he would bring back black money. But all corrupt leaders are being absorbed in the BJP which acts like a washing machine.”.
Nine seats in Kolkata, South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas are scheduled to vote in the last phase on June 1. The BJP made deep inroads in the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when it won 18 of the state’s 42 seats. The nine seats in three districts of south Bengal that are due to vote on Saturday, however, had gone to the TMC in 2019.
Banerjee said she was confident that the BJP would lose the Lok Sabha elections. “He (Modi) will be able to call himself prime minister for another week or so. After that, he will have to use the word former. Today he said he monitored the cyclone from Delhi. It is a blatant lie. Does it suit him? Telling lies is not the prime minister’s constitutional right,” Banerjee told the rally in Kolkata South Lok Sabha constituency.
Banerjee continued her attacks on Modi, saying his party. “You are stopping people from eating fish, meat and eggs and you have mushrooms from Thailand that cost ₹80,000 each. His lunch pack costs around ₹4,00,000,” she said, repeating a claim that was first made by former Congress leader Alpesh Thakor in the runup to the 2017 Gujarat assembly elections. To be sure, Thakor, who had claimed Modi’s meals included Taiwanese mushrooms, later switched to the BJP and is Gandhinagar South legislator.