Mamata Banerjee on Monday said she suspected the BJP would spring a surprise by having the next general election scheduled for the summer of 2024 conducted as early as December this year.
“There is no reason to trust them,” the Trinamul Congress chairperson said in her address at the foundation day event of her party’s student wing on Mayo Road here.
She was warning her party’s rank and file — especially its elected representatives — against complacency when she brought up the likelihood of the Lok Sabha elections being brought forward.
“Arrey, the (Lok Sabha) elections are anyway but a couple of days away,” said the Bengal chief minister.
“I now suspect that they might have the general election conducted in December… or January, they could do it. It is quite possible,” she added, going on to attack the saffron regime over attempts to compromise the Election Commission of India by replacing the Chief Justice of India with a Union cabinet minister on a panel that was to be set up on the order of the Supreme Court to select the chief election commissioner and election commissioners.
Sources in her party said she was privy to rumours in Delhi’s corridors of power that the BJP was reluctant to risk going into the general election with the damage of the likely defeat in the Assembly elections in three of four states (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Rajasthan) at the end of this year. They said it was a point she was likely to emphasise at the Mumbai meeting later this week of the 26-party anti-BJP block INDIA.
The chief minister repeatedly urged the people against the mistake of allowing the BJP one more term in Delhi.
“See, while the Prime Minister makes lofty, false claims of unity on his trips abroad, atrocities against Muslim children are being encouraged by the system in schools of Uttar Pradesh…. Dalits cannot even begin to express in words how brutally they are being tortured across the length and breadth of this country.”
“If we don’t act according to our resolve now, the BJP will come to power again… and should that happen, there will never be any escape again from their tyranny. They will fully convert this country into a nation of hatred. They practice the politics of depravity…. They will demolish the constitution and establish a fully autocratic regime,” she added. “We removed the CPM from power (in Bengal) when it was deemed impossible. Today, our fight is to remove the BJP from the seat of power in Delhi. I urge everyone to fight like lions, with our heads held high.”
