Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday set an audacious target of 35 Lok Sabha seats for the BJP in Bengal and predicted the implosion of the Mamata Banerjee government before "25".
The topics Shah flagged suggested that his party remained unwilling to use anything other than the weapon of polarisation, although it did not reap dividends for the BJP in the state in the 2021 Assembly elections.
Shah, who addressed a public meeting at Suri in Birbhum district, did not refer to the upcoming panchayat elections. But he scaled up by 10 his previous target of 25 Lok Sabha seats for the BJP from Bengal.
“In 24, give us 35 seats. I am telling you, there will be no need for 25. Even before 25, Mamatadi’s government will become ka-da-da-da bhooss (an onomatopoeic expression implying collapse or implosion),” he said.
Accusing chief minister Mamata Banerjee of prioritising her nephew Abhishek Banerjee’s ascent to her post, Shah asserted that the next chief minister of the state would be from the BJP.
Although Shah’s party had won 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, it has been steadily declining since the historic drubbing handed to it by the Bengal electorate in the Assembly elections in 2021. The BJP won 77 of 294 seats in the Assembly.
The BJP now has 70 MLAs left in the Assembly, while the Trinamul Congress effectively has 221. One seat is vacant on account of minister Sadhan Pande’s demise, while the Congress and the ISF have one member each. The majority mark needed to form the government in the state is 148.
In his address at the Benimadhab school ground in Suri, Shah cited the figure again.
“If Ram Navami processions cannot be taken out in peace, how can that go on? But the Trinamul Congress’s politics of appeasement, this audacity has increased. I assure you, once Bengal gives 35 Lok Sabha seats to (Narendra) Modiji, sets up a BJP government here, nobody will dare attack a Ram Navami procession in Bengal,” he said.
Repeatedly broaching subjects such as terror, militancy, cattle-rustling, infiltration, Pakistan, and Kashmir — some of the saffron ecosystem’s favourite tropes for otherisation and vilification of Muslims — Shah referred to the under-construction Ram temple in Ayodhya and tension around Ram Navami, to attack Mamata.
“Friends, ensure the blooming of the lotus in Bengal once. There will neither be an explosion of bombs nor will there be attacks on Ram Navami. Neither will there be atrocities, nor will there be infiltration. There will be no theft of cows. In Bengal, the kind of corruption that is underway, the only way to eliminate that is the BJP,” he said.
“Parties like Trinamul, the Congress and the communists had tried obstructing the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya for years. But Modiji laid the foundation stone,” added Shah. “Leaders such as Mamata Banerjee are never able to give a fitting response to Pakistan, or fight militancy in Kashmir.”
Shah said the BJP was “the only way” of ridding Bengal of the “crimes” of Mamata and her nephew.
Raising a number of graft allegations against Trinamul, the Union home minister urged its leaders to have “some shame”.
“Deceiving the unemployed youths of Bengal with corruption, you are having bungalows built for yourselves?” he asked.
“And when Modiji throws them behind the bars, they claim atrocities,” he added.
“Arrey Mamatadidi! You and your nephew, do whatever you want to. This war against corruption is not going to stop. We will bring an end to corruption.”