Mamata Banerjee on Thursday set a five-to-six-month expiry date for the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, predicting its premature collapse this monsoon.
The chief minister and Trinamool Congress chief also issued an ultimatum to those she deemed the BJP’s agents for allegedly tampering with Bengal’s electorate and election machinery to oust her through mala fide means.
Amid a high-voltage campaign blitz across West Burdwan and Birbhum, Mamata pivoted from her anti-SIR pitch to a promise of systemic reckoning.
“By August or September this year, the BJP government in Delhi will fall,” Mamata told a huge gathering at the Laudoha football ground in Pandabeswar, apparently seeking to revise the stakes of the Assembly election.
“Then I will see what happens to those acting like BJP agents and taking away people’s voting rights. I will not do anything. But they will naturally receive the rewards of their misdeeds,” she added.
She then referred to the Mahabharata, drawing from the name of the Assembly seat. “The name of this place is Pandabeswar. Our fight is against the Kauravs. We are the Pandavs,” said Mamata.
The chief minister also tore into the Election Commission’s recent administrative churn — conducted without her consultation — and the allegedly opaque handling of the contentious “logical discrepancy” and “under adjudication” categories in the Bengal SIR.
For a leader stripped of her administrative powers by the model code of conduct, the August-September timeline was a deliberate attempt to signal that the current national power structure is transient.
“I was never consulted before they changed all the high-ranking officials. Although I am not vindictive, I will remember this. If you stealthily want to impose President’s Rule, remember I am capable enough to handle this since I have people’s support,” she said.
“They (the BJP) said they (the EC) would delete 1.2 crore names (of voters in Bengal). Already, 58 lakh have been deleted.... Then, in the name of ‘logical discrepancy’, they have put 60 lakh people ‘under adjudication’. If you add 58 lakh and 60 lakh, you see they have almost achieved their target. This has entirely been planned by the BJP party office,” she said.
She claimed credit for forcing the retention of “60 per cent” of those targeted in the latest round of judicial scrutiny.
“I have heard that 40 per cent of names “under adjudication” have been deleted while 60 per cent have been retained, so far. This is entirely our credit. We have fought for it from the streets to the Supreme Court,” she said, before lambasting authorities for the secrecy surrounding the supplementary list.
“Why has the (first) supplementary list not been made public yet? I challenge the persons concerned. Even journalists haven’t been given the list. What is being hidden?” she demanded, promising free legal help to anyone wrongfully deleted so they can appeal before the tribunals according to the apex court’s ruling.
She said the BJP was doing all this as it was unable to fight her democratically.
“That is why they are changing every officer and replacing them with people they think are inclined towards them. But everyone is our people. BJP conspires day and night...,” she alleged.
“Vote to safeguard your rights. They have already done SIR. Now, they are planning to do NRC and put people in detention camps. Today, you might have your name in the voter list. Tomorrow, your name can be struck off when they do the Census. Till Trinamool is in power, we won’t allow anyone to be sent to detention camps. We are fighting for your rights,” she added.
Mid-air scare
Mamata Banerjee’s flight from Andal to Calcutta encountered a storm above the Dum Dum airport. For 80 minutes, the aircraft hovered in the city sky as ground-level winds made landing impossible. After multiple failed approaches, touchdown occurred at 5.18pm. Mamata, who boasts of surviving political and physical tempests over four decades, proceeded to her 30B Harish Chatterjee Street residence under heavy security.
