Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday alleged that Union home minister Amit Shah and his "hyangla (greedy)" party would have sabotaged and overthrown her government ahead of the Assembly election had she not allowed the contentious special intensive revision (SIR) to be conducted.
The chief minister, who was speaking at Malda's Gazole on Wednesday, also urged people not to fear the proces, vowing to pledge the people as their paharadar (protector).
Mamata's claim that Shah would have felled her government if she had resisted the SIR came as a clarification on why, despite her fervid resistance to the allegedly compromised Election Commission's poll roll clean-up exercise, she was compelled to play ball.
Mounting a fierce offensive on Shah and the saffron regime, Mamata said that they were digging their own graves by pushing the envelope with the rushed SIR just months before the Bengal election.
"Eta Amit Shah korechhey... na manley sarkar pheley dao. Tumi jotoi chalaki koro... chalakir dwara kono mohot karjyo shomponno hoy na (This Amit Shah has done... if Bengal doesn't accept it, topple the government. No matter how cunning you are... no great work succeeds through cunning). They will never capture Bengal. The people of Bengal will never support them. Bengal and Bihar are not the same," said the chief minister and Trinamool Congress supremo.
"The commission’s hasty decision has caused widespread fear among the masses. They are desperate to do it (the SIR) before the election, behaving like jomidar (feudal lords)... the (Union) home minister, the hyangla party," she added. "I have come here not to seek votes, but to soothe nerves... nobody is going to a detention camp or getting deported for as long as we are here. They (the BJP) are in Delhi today, they won't be there tomorrow. I am your paharadar. "
There has been criticism from other non-BJP forces — mainly the Bengal leadership of the Congress and the CPM — and even sections of her support base over her government's apparently timid compliance once the commission brought the SIR to Bengal, despite months of belligerent opposition to it.
A Trinamool senior from the Treasury benches in the Assembly pointed out that what Mamata said wasn't exactly outlandish, pointing out that senior Bengal BJP leaders like Sukanta Majumdar and Suvendu Adhikari had dropped broad hints of President's rule in the state if the Election Commission was barred by her dispensation from conducting the SIR.
The chief minister on Wednesday again clarified that she wasn't principally opposed to the SIR process, but sniffed a rat in its timing.
“It (the SIR) needs time. Your desperation is a giveaway," she said, adding that at least 39 persons had died and another 13 were battling for their lives in Bengal alone — another three had attempted suicide.
“Why this inordinate rush? To paralyse the state government and derail it from its development path before the election?” she asked.
Mamata said that her dispensation would start "May I Help You" camps in every block and every ward of the state from December 12.
"If anyone is missing any document, they will get them there. I am telling Trinamool workers, you must work actively to help the people and BLOs," said Mamata.
"Fill the forms, attend the hearings, so your name is not removed. Ask the migrant workers to return," Mamata said. "Without Bengal, there would have been no Renaissance, no Independence, no nation-building... there is no India without Bengal," she added.
Mamata said the BJP was like bedbugs, which keep sucking blood till they are removed for good. "They must therefore be removed politically, so that Bengal does not bleed out," said the Trinamool chief.
The EC on Sunday extended the enumeration period of the SIR from December 4 to 11. The draft election roll will be published on December 16 and the final roll on February 14, all extended by a week.