Mamata Banerjee on Saturday mounted a scathing offensive on the BJP and its government at the Centre, accusing them of de-prioritising Covid-19 for six months to try and win Bengal, of continuing with “Goebbelsian lies” about the state even now, and being “unable to digest” the people’s verdict.
The chief minister, addressing the Bengal Assembly after the election of Trinamul’s Biman Banerjee as Speaker for the third term, did not pull any punches in her diatribe against the saffron ecosystem.
“They are unable to tolerate, digest, accept the mandate, the verdict of the people. That is why, in the name of violence they have started this whole business of fake videos…. Step-motherly treatment began within 24 hours of swearing in,” said Mamata.
The saffron camp, yet to apparently recover from the shock of getting 77 MLAs to Trinamul’s 213 after two years of assertions of the “certainty” of a 200-plus tally, has accused Trinamul of violence of apocalyptic proportions in Bengal.
However, the violence is far from one-sided. Also, numerous fact-checking exercises by AltNews and others have revealed that many videos and pictures circulated by the saffron camp and its followers on social media — and given substantial coverage by pliant sections of the television media — had little or nothing to do with Bengal.
“Bengal would never have rewarded you. The people here do not like the divisiveness, which is your very basis. They do not like riots. Bengal believes in a culture you can’t comprehend,” she said, advising the BJP to accept the defeat and move on.
“We caught all your lies, 99 per cent fake videos, fake news…,” she said.
“Insulting the women of the state (saffron camp’s allegations on crimes against women) as they played a pivotal role in our victory. No party in the history of state elections in India got such a massive mandate,” she added.
In the saffron echo chamber, there have been outlandish demands ranging from the imposition of Article 356 in Bengal and “reducing it to a Kashmir-like rubble” to a “third Partition” of the state (culling out parts in the north and the west that voted for the BJP and giving them separate BJP-led governments).
“Some people are trying to trigger riots. Some are saying things that make one shiver…one feels intensely provoked....But we must not get provoked. Bengal is the place where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists… live in amity, it is cosmopolitan, inclusive, humanist,” Mamata said on Saturday.
“I request all legislators to ensure peace and harmony in their areas. If someone tries to foment tension, file FIRs, explain to people that these are all lies, lies, lies…. Communalism will not be tolerated. That’s all they (the BJP) know, all that they can. It is their mental pollution. They have nothing else by way of a goal or ideology,” she added.
Mamata mocked the Modi-Shah duopoly’s pitch for a “double-engine sarkar” in Bengal (same party ruling the Centre and state) by saying people responded with a “double century” for Trinamul.
“Abraham Lincoln had famously said: ‘You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time’…. I had predicted their overused Goebbelsian lies won’t work this time,” she said.
Mamata went on to attack the BJP and its Centre of mismanaging the nation’s war efforts against the pandemic.
“For six months, they did nothing to prepare against Covid-19. They pushed the country to the brink of ruin in their desperation to conquer Bengal.... All its honchos did not budge from Bengal,” she said. “Countless crores they spent...to maliciously influence the election. Had they spent that on vaccination instead, universal free immunisation would have happened by now,” she added. “Around 140 crore Indians, for their universal, free immunisation, need around Rs 30,000 crore. To the Centre, that amount is nothing…. But they are spending Rs 50,000 crore instead on a new Parliament building, a new house for the Prime Minister.”
She also underscored what the BJP’s defeat in Bengal meant for the rest of India. “The win was historic, incredible, miraculous…. Bengal won, and it saved the rest of India too, remember this,” she said. “The whole world was watching us, and in every corner, people are relieved...”
