Mamata Banerjee on Monday tore into the saffron camp over the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the contentious special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in poll-bound states, demanding that the former be withdrawn and the latter be put on hold.
The Bengal chief minister, during an interaction with journalists in Siliguri on the first day of her north Bengal trip, said agreeing to support the GST — which she said then Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra had convinced her to do — was a “very big blunder”.
“I believe the GST should be revoked. Amit Mitra had convinced me earlier, and I had agreed, but that was a mistake, a very big blunder,” she said.
Economist Mitra was the finance minister in her cabinet between 2011 and 2021, and was made the principal chief adviser to the chief minister and the finance department thereafter. The advice Mamata was referring to could have been offered by Mitra while he was chairperson of the empowered committee of state finance ministers, which worked out the details of the GST prior to its imposition in 2017.
“Now, many transactions are taxed and the Centre is misusing money collected from the states for wasteful expenditure, and diverting funds to (NDA-ruled) states. They travel abroad and return wearing gold garlands. The Union government’s main roles should be defence and the borders, most other matters are a state prerogative,” added Mamata.
The chief minister and Trinamool Congress supremo had claimed Bengal alone had to lose ₹20,000 crore for the GST reforms in September.
“The Centre has been advertising that it has made insurance free, that is a lie. They take our money, squander it... and then call it generosity. They collect large sums as GST and claim credit for benefits, which is misleading. That money came from (state) coffers, it is not their achievement,” Mamata said.
On the subject of SIR, Mamata went on to demand that the ongoing “super Emergency” of votebandi — drawing parallels with the “draconian” notebandi (demonetisation) of 2016 by the Narendra Modi government — be immediately stopped in poll-bound states such as Bengal by the Election Commission of India, which she has repeatedly accused of being compromised under the saffron regime.
Her party’s Rajya Sabha member Dola Sen and Kolkata Dakshin MP Mala Roy filed a petition before the Supreme Court, questioning the legitimacy of the speed with which the SIR process is being carried out in Bengal.
Trinamool sources said the matter is likely to be heard on Tuesday.
“Why such atrocities if one speaks in Bengali? Why will you take so many lives? Are you not ashamed?” asked Mamata.
“They should have taken two years to do this (like in 2002). They could have done a good survey. They could have done a census too. Suddenly, before the elections, why is there such a mad rush?” she asked.
“So that the state government cannot work for these three months. A super Emergency has been declared.... I still think that this process should be paused.”
Mamata has been unrelenting for months in her attacks on the saffron regime over the alleged linguistic apartheid against Bengali-speaking Indians, weaving in with it the issue of “backdoor NRC” by an allegedly compromised Nirvachan Sadan, which she says is a “conspiracy to disenfranchise” the poor and the marginalised who she believes are unlikely to vote for the BJP.
Multiple saffron camp insiders have admitted to apprehensions over the electoral outcome of Mamata’s call for a major uprising in the election next summer against the alleged othering and politically motivated marginalisation of the Bengali identity and the Bengal ethos, which she has linked with the SIR in Bengal.
“The BJP can send me to jail, cut my throat... but they must not snatch the voting rights of Indian citizens,” she said on Monday.