• Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is on stage at Red Road, continuing the protest she began on Wednesday
• Trinamul leaders join Mamata on stage on Thursday. Ministers Shashi Panja and Chandrima Bhattacharya are sitting on either side. Birbaha Hansda, Jun Malia, Dola Sen, Sayani Ghosh are also present. Women councilors of various municipalities have also joined her
• Trinamul Lok Sabha MP Kalyan Banerjee speaks to Mamata on stage Also on stage are Subrata Bakshi, Arup Biswas, Babul Supriya, Indranil Sen, Manoj Tiwari
• Students and youths play guitar and sing songs with Mamata on stage
• On Wednesday night a curtain was drawn across the stage as the chief minister retired for the night. Among those present, she asked the women to remain on the dais with her. Later at night, she came down from the stage and sang a few songs with party leaders who were waiting near the elevated stage

Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday issued a call for non-BJP parties across India to unite ahead of the general election to save the people.

Brushing aside leadership concerns in the national Opposition space, the Bengal chief minister tried to explain with the example of 11 states, accounting for 271 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, how achievable a BJP defeat is.

She questioned the BJP’s very ability to win next year, dismissing the meticulously crafted and religiously protected perception of the invincibility of the Narendra Modi regime.

“How will they win in the future? Ask them. They came to power in the past during a peak hour… they have already peaked,” Mamata said during her address in the evening at the Red Road site of her 30-hour dharna against the BJP and the government it leads at the Centre over a number of issues.

She tried playing down the significance of the leadership question in the national Opposition space.

“There is no interest in who the leader (of the united Opposition) would be…. This is not that fight at all. The fight is to save the nation,” said Mamata. Seniors in her parliamentary party have said she believes it is possible to drag the BJP’s Lok Sabha tally down to less than 130 if the Congress sacrifices its leadership role to back an Opposition roundtable, with due importance to the regional forces.

“The BJP’s might versus the people’s fight. Everybody is the leader in this, every citizen of this country,” she added. “The BJP will be forced to vacate its seat of power, 1:1 (only the strongest non-BJP candidate against the BJP candidate in every seat).”

The Trinamul Congress chief was in her element at the protest, donning the hat of a street fighter and reprising a role she played for the vast majority of her political career.

Mamata said that around 16 National Democratic Alliance constituents had deserted the BJP. “Everybody left because the people are suffering. What will they achieve alone?” she asked.

In her recent efforts to unite non-BJP regional satraps, she has frequently been part of back-channel parleys with 15-odd former NDA constituents, such as the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab, the JDU in Bihar, and the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

She is also in regular touch with DMK chief M.K. Stalin, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, JMM leader Hemant Soren, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and BSR chief K. Chandrashekar Rao.

“The most that they can get is from Uttar Pradesh, their only major hope… there, they do not let anybody else play. In Madhya Pradesh too, perhaps,” said the Bengal chief minister. The two states have 109 Lok Sabha seats between them.

“Tell me, where will they get the (winning) votes from in Bihar, Rajasthan, Odisha, Bengal, Punjab, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Delhi, Jharkhand?” she asked, bringing up 11 states — with a combined total of 271 seats — where the BJP is unlikely to make a mark. “Taking away just 100 (seats from their current total) would be enough.... You actually should take away 50 per cent (of the BJP tally of 303). Very easy.”

Mamata suggested that the awareness of this possibility was what prompted the saffron regime to misuse the central agencies.

“This is why they want everybody behind bars before the elections, by misusing central agencies. So that these political parties are not able to work, organise, campaign at the grassroots,” she said.

“They (the BJP) don’t know when (their seat of power in) Delhi becomes shaky, the storm that awaits them there,” added Mamata, who reminded officials of central agencies of their duty to remain impartial in conduct and warned them of consequences “from the people” when the BJP is ousted from the Centre.

The Bengal chief minister revisited a number of times the alleged misuse of central probe agencies by the BJP-led Centre — a main plank of her demonstration — to hound and browbeat the dissidents in the Opposition into submission.

“I am saying this to all (non-BJP) Opposition parties across the country, there is none that does not face torture. Many stay quiet, cannot speak out,” she said.

“Who remains (unharmed)? From (SP chief) Akhilesh to (RJD chief) Lalu Yadav, Uddhav to Arvind, (YSRCP chief Y.S.) Jagan (Mohan Reddy) to Stalin and (BSR chief) KCR. Everybody else is a thief, only those in the BJP are saints,” added Mamata.

That she wanted her message to be understood by a wider audience, beyond Bengal, was apparent from her use of Hindi to deliver parts of the statement.

“Every party in the (national) Opposition has to come together for this fight, to oust the BJP from power, from the chair, from the nation. Every Opposition party has to unite forces and fight successfully, with their head high,” she said in her appeal for wider Opposition unity.

Cong spared

There has apparently been a subtle recalibration in Mamata’s approach towards the non-BJP coalition of political forces since the saffron regime’s manoeuvres to have Congress leader Rahul Gandhi disqualified as a member of the Lok Sabha. She had been pitching firmly for equidistance from the BJP as well as the Congress till that happened.

In the afternoon, her nephew and heir-apparent Abhishek Banerjee — who spoke at the dharna before her — issued a statement of support for Rahul in a rally.

“They (the BJP) are the nation’s biggest Dushashan, remove them to save Hindustan. Remove Duryodhan and save the nation. Remove the BJP’s washing machine and save the people, the masses, irrespective of what their faith is or what they do for a living. Remove the BJP and save democracy,” Mamata said.

The deft reprioritisation was palpable from how she went after the BJP and the CPM in a state-level political diatribe in her address but spared the Congress.