Mamata Banerjee, in a conspicuous departure from her campaign speeches this season, on Tuesday was silent on Congress spearhead Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury while delivering an address in his backyard Behrampore, and relatively muted on the Left.
Sources in Trinamul attributed this to her growing understanding that the better the Congress-Left alliance performs in the state polls the worse it will be for the BJP.
Sources said she had also been receiving “back channel communication” that support from the Congress might be readily available, should the results yield a hung House.
The chief minister, in her 35-minute address at Murshidabad’s Behrampore Stadium grounds, did not pull punches in her attack on the BJP before the audience of over a lakh.
“The Congress and the CPM cannot act against (cannot defeat) the BJP any longer,” said Mamata towards the beginning without elaboration.
Arriving by chopper around 2.30pm, Mamata focused on Trinamul turncoat Suvendu Adhikari, the BJP’s catch of the season, referring obliquely to him as a modern Mir Jafar, a sobriquet commonly used to describe a traitor in Bengal.
She also slammed AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, without naming him, for allegedly being a BJP paid agent to erode her minority support base.
But a bulk of her speech was directed against Narendra Modi, his government at the Centre, and his party.
“Have you ever heard of a Prime Minister who speaks lies? He alleged our state does not pay its employees their salaries. Modiji, please tell me whom you were referring to. Rather, it is you who is selling off everything the Centre owns,” she said, stirring a supportive crowd of largely migrant workers who returned home in the pandemic.
The 22-seat district of Murshidabad is important to Mamata as there is scope for her party to grow there. In the 2016 state polls, Trinamul won four seats in the district with over 67 per cent minority voters. The Congress, under Chowdhury, won 14, and the Left four. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Trinamul gained decisive leads in 16 Assembly segments, while the Congress was reduced to five. The BJP had a lead in the Murshidabad Assembly segment.
This time, Mamata will reach out to migrant workers with the Modi government’s “lockdown mega blunder”, a Trinamul MP said.
Last year, at the peak of the pandemic, the plight of migrant workers took centrestage, with questions on why Modi announced a nationwide lockdown with a four-hour notice minus steps to cushion the vulnerable.
“Four-hour notice to pack up and move our lives,” scoffed Arabinda Mondal, who used to work in Kerala and has since returned, at the rally.
