Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar has once again said the Mamata Banerjee government will face a premature collapse — a possible situation which other leaders of the saffron camp like Suvendu Adhikari and Dilip Ghosh don't endorse.
Balurghat MP Majumdar has made the statement to the effect twice in a span of four days.
Addressing a BJP rally in Calcutta on Wednesday, Majumdar referred to a comment made by Union home minister Amit Shah at a meeting in Birbhum in April. Shah had said if the people of Bengal elected 35 BJP MPs in "24", the Mamata government would collapse before "25".
"At a Birbhum rally, the honourable home minister had said that give us more than 35 seats this (state) government will be dhas dhas dhas dhas dhopaas (an onomatopoeic expression implying collapse or implosion). Ei sarkar dhopaas hote parey (This government can collapse)," Majumdar said.
He apparently took it upon himself to loosely translate the onomatopoeic expression used by Shah — ka-da-da-da bhooss — into Bengali.
The BJP rally in Calcutta was organised to protest the alleged malpractices during the rural polls. Majumdar was flanked by his predecessor Dilip Ghosh and the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari.
Both Ghosh and Adhikari had publicly opined against the idea of engineering a premature implosion of an elected government.
On Sunday, Majumdar had suggested the possibility of a Maharashtra-like (the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena mutiny of 2022) scenario, in which Trinamul Congress lawmakers will desert the Bengal chief minister en masse.
Majumdar was endorsing a comment from junior Union minister Shantanu Thakur, who had said on Saturday that the state government will fall in five months.
In the 294-seat Bengal Assembly — with one vacancy — Trinamul effectively has 223 MLAs, while the BJP has 69, and the ISF has one.
Though Adhikari and Majumdar have had their differences over whether a government should be brought down before its term is over — the LoP doesn't endorse the idea of acquiring power through "the backdoor"— they both have demanded the implementation of Article 355 in Bengal. The non-BJP camps have criticised such demands and claims of the party.
Article 355 gives the Centre the power to take over the law and order machinery of a state temporarily to protect it "against external aggression and internal disturbance".
Adhikari requested the state chief to announce a program where BJP supporters and common voters will gherao block offices to protest against the "loot and rigging" of rural polls. Majumdar announced that BJP would observe this program at all block offices on Friday, July 21, which is observed as Martyrs' Day by Trinamul.