New Delhi: “If we unite, the BJP will lose the 2024 elections,” West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said Monday, adding that only the judiciary could “save the nation”.
Banerjee accused the BJP of targeting Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLAs in a “planned manner”, while no action was taken against wrongdoers in the BJP, the chief minister said.
On Monday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested party MLA Jiban Krishna Saha in the West Bengal teachers’ recruitment scam.
It is alleged that Saha acted as a conduit in collecting money from candidates by promising them jobs in the education department as teachers — in the recruitment process of the first West Bengal State Level Selection Test (SLST) 2016 for classes 9 and 10.
The Supreme Court, however, brought some cheer to the TMC Monday when it stayed the Calcutta High Court’s 13 April order calling for a CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) probe of Abhishek Banerjee in the recruitment scam.
Banerjee also demanded Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s resignation Monday for saying in a recent rally that her government would fall before time.
“Instead of protecting India, Home Minister Amit Shah is conspiring to topple my government,” Banerjee said.
Last Friday, while inaugurating a party office in Birbhum, Shah said if the BJP got 35 seats in the state, Mamata’s government would not survive beyond the 2025 Assembly elections.
“Whenever elections are due, BJP makes comments that polarise communities,” Banerjee said, reiterating her stance that she would not allow implementation of the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act in West Bengal.
She also criticised the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh after the murder of gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf on Saturday night. “Encounters have become a normal thing for the people of Uttar Pradesh. People of UP should protest against these encounters. If anything happens in West Bengal, they (BJP) send central agencies. BJP is double engine… double standard,” Banerjee said.
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