Union Home Minister Amit Shah on day 2 of his West Bengal visit for organizational meetings with BJP party workers in Kolkata, reportedly asked them not to focus on the Chief Ministerial candidate’s face and not target Mamata Banerjee as an individual, but to attack the Trinamool Congress(TMC) as a whole.
The BJP is confident of winning 200 of 294 seats as a blueprint is being worked out by the party’s central leadership with Prime Minister Narendra Modi being the factor to woo Bengal’s voters. Shah told the media on Thursday that the party will win by 2/3rd majority in the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal.
After visiting the Dakhineshwar temple on Friday Shah said, “Bengal is the birthplace of great spiritual leaders like Chaitanya, Ramkrishna and Swami Vivekananda,” Shah said. “But the politics of appeasement has robbed the state of its tradition of spirituality. I urge voters to vote for the BJP to revive the lost pride.”
Amongst the second day’s visit itinerary, the Union Home Minister also had lunch with a Matua community family, similar to the lunch visit to a tribal family’s house on Thursday. This is an outreach effort to garner the support of the tribal and refugee population in the state.
The ruling TMC, however, broke their silence in a tweet on day two of the visit and hit out at Shah saying, “'Bohiragato' are at it again! Union Home Minister @AmitShah is so ignorant of Bengal's culture that he insulted Bhagwan Birsa Munda by garlanding a wrong idol & placed his photo at someone else's foot. Will he ever respect Bengal?”
Mamata’s nephew and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee lashed out at Shah over the alleged political gimmick to eat lunch with the tribal families in the state. “Reality behind @AmitShah Ji's token meals - he used ST Community & the concerned family as a political tool & didn't even bother to speak to them for a moment. Mr Home Minister, did you come here only for a photo-op? #BengalAsksAmitShah”
The battle for the West Bengal gets more fierce as BJP is determined to sweep the carpet from under the TMC’s feet and rule the corridors of power, even as the ruling party fight back with undeterred confidence of holding onto its turf.
