Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday squarely blamed Union home minister Amit Shah and the central agencies under his control for the recent waqf-related unrest in Bengal, even advising Prime Minister Narendra Modi to keep his lieutenant on a leash.
Implicit in her appeal was an effort to see Modi as separate from the dispensation he helms and absolve him of any role in the crimes she has accused it of perpetrating in Bengal.
At an event organised by Muslim clerics at the Netaji Indoor Stadium, which Mamata claimed was originally meant to be a post-Eid gathering, the chief minister said the Modi government’s Waqf Amendment Act infringed on the freedom to manage religious affairs and properties guaranteed in Article 26 of the Constitution and challenged the Centre to come clean on why it had rushed to have the amended law passed.
“Are you unaware of the situation in Bangladesh? Bengal shares a border with Bangladesh…. You (the Centre) hold secret meetings with (Bangladesh chief adviser Muhammad) Yunus and sign agreements. If those agreements are truly for India’s development, I will be happy,” said the Trinamool Congress chief, amid rising pressure on her government for the perceived failure to maintain law and order and her alleged politics of appeasement.
Muslims form a third of Bengal’s electorate and determine the outcome in around 120 of the 294 Assembly seats.
Mamata called the unrest “pre-planned” and “deliberately designed” to malign the state and underscored how the pockets of Murshidabad that saw violence were part of the Malda Dakshin Lok Sabha seat won by the Congress.
“What is exactly your plan? Is it to bring people in (from Bangladesh) through (central) agencies and foment riots here?” she asked, referring to a news report she said she read on Union home ministry sources suggesting Bangladesh involvement in the Bengal incidents. “If that is true, then the Centre is responsible. They control the BSF, not us. Why then was this allowed?”
Blaming vast sections of the mainstream media deemed pliant towards the saffron regime for harbouring bias against her, Mamata said every major news network presents Bengal in a poor light.
“They are aligned with Amit Shah. I usually do not name him, but if the Union home ministry does a Kalidas and cuts down the very branch it is perched on, I have to. You (Shah) will never be Prime Minister,” Mamata said.
“What will you do after Modiji? You will have to give hamaguri (crawl on all fours)…. He (Shah) has caused our nation the most damage. My humble request to Modiji, please control him. You have handed him every agency and he has been plotting all sorts of intrigue,” she said. “Who even knows Amit Shah other than those linked to the Gujarat riots? We have not forgotten anything. Those who gain power through riots will not value human blood.”
This was not the first time Mamata distinguished Modi from his government or the others in it, such as Shah, to suggest that the Prime Minister was not to be blamed for much, if not all, of the saffron regime’s transgressions.
“I appeal to the Prime Minister, please do not allow any terrible atrocities towards any community under your leadership, perpetrated by your Union home minister. Please see what he has been up to through some agencies. He is the planner who wants to change the game. But he cannot break the nation or its unity,” Mamata said.
However, she followed it up with her theory that the Modi government would collapse in about a year.
“In the next one year — please have some patience — change is going to come to Delhi. I am waiting for it,” Mamata said, pointing out that the BJP does not enjoy a majority in the Lok Sabha.
She urged others in the INDIA space, the national anti-BJP bloc she had abandoned last year, to reunite and fight fiercely.
Mamata urged Muslims to take the protests from the streets to indoor spaces, and from Bengal to Delhi, as the amended waqf law is a central act. She pledged not to implement it in the state.