Kolkata: Outgoing West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Tuesday said that there was no question of her resigning, following Monday’s defeat of her party in the assembly elections, bringing to an end 15 years of the Trinamool Congress government.
The TMC, she said, was not defeated by public mandate but by a conspiracy.
“The question of my resignation does not arise…. I did not lose; I will not go to Lok Bhavan. They can take action as per constitutional norms,” Banerjee said in the first press conference after losing the election.
Her government’s term comes to an end tonight.
In a historic first, the BJP has won 207 of the 294 assembly seats in West Bengal, with the TMC reduced to 87 seats.
Banerjee herself lost her home turf, Bhabanipur, by a margin of over 15,000 votes to her one-time close aide Suvendu Adhikari, the BJP’s most prominent face in this election.
Calling the results a “black chapter in the history of Bengal”, Banerjee said that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was the villain of the election, undermining the democratic rights of the people and the integrity of the electronic voting machines (EVMs).
“Can you explain how EVMs showed 80–95 percent charging after voting? How is that possible? Even two days before the election, the police began arresting people indiscriminately. Raids were conducted everywhere. Officials—from ICs and OCs to SGOs, DMs, and IPS officers—were changed across the board, including WBCS and WBPS officers. These appointments, in our view, were politically influenced. The BJP, in effect, played the game directly with the Election Commission. You could describe it as a kind of ‘setting’ between the BJP and the Election Commission,” Banerjee said.
The outgoing CM contended that the TMC’s contest in the polls was not against the BJP, but against the Election Commission, which worked “for the BJP”. Alleging rampant irregularities in the counting process, she claimed that votes in nearly 100 seats were “looted”.
“… Counting was deliberately slowed down to demoralise my party workers… They misbehaved with me, so I can guess how much the other candidates and workers were tortured. The party and other INDIA bloc leaders are standing in solidarity with them. We will bounce back and fight back… We fought them just like a tiger,” Banerjee said.
The outgoing CM said that Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi also called her Monday to express solidarity after the Bengal poll results. “We will now work to strengthen the INDIA bloc,” she added.
Banerjee said other INDIA bloc leaders, including Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav and Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Tejaswi Yadav, will be arriving in Kolkata starting Wednesday to support her.
“My target is very clear. Now I don’t hold any position, so I am a common citizen. You (BJP) cannot say that I am using any official position. I am now a free bird, and I have my entire life dedicated to serving the people,” Banerjee said, adding that even during the last 15 years, “I have not withdrawn a single paisa as pension, nor have I taken any salary.”
Banerjee reiterated her claim that nearly 100 seats had been forcibly taken away from her party.
Blaming the media, the outgoing CM said, “I am sorry to say this, but from Delhi, the media was strategically brought in right from the first round of counting. I had already told you earlier, please watch my video from two to three days ago. In the initial rounds, the counting was conducted in a way that could weaken the morale of our workers and give the BJP an advantage. Our fight was not just against the BJP; we also had to contend with what we believe was a biased Election Commission.”
The TMC chief said the party would constitute a 10-member fact-finding committee, which would visit the areas hit by violence since the results. The committee, she said, would also have five MPs.
She said that her party’s fight was not just against the BJP but against the entire machinery. “The Prime Minister and the Home Minister were also involved…there was direct interference,” she said.
She said that through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the Election Commission deleted 90 lakh names from the voter list. “When we approached the court, 32 lakh names were restored. But do you know that another seven lakh names, which were submitted together, were also included later, and nobody is aware of that? This shows how such dirty, nasty, and mischievous games were played.”
“I have never seen this kind of election in my life. Since my student days, I have witnessed many elections, even in 2004, when I was alone, but I have never seen such atrocities.”
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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