Mamta trying to save her defeat in next Assembly poll

BJP tears into Mamata Banerjee’s newfound love for Left

TNN | Aug 31, 2014, 01.24 AM IST

The state BJP president remarked that Mamata had drawn inspiration from the “immoral alliance” between Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar in Bihar. 

KOLKATA: Mamata Banerjee's newfound love for the once-untouchable CPM to keep BJP at bay has drawn flak from the state BJP unit.

Party state president Rahul Sinha on Saturday borrowed the "watermelon" (green outside and red inside) phrase from Mamata's book on Saturday to hit out at her party. "If Congress is watermelon, Trinamool is hybrid watermelon," said Sinha, deriding Mamata's statement in a TV interview that she was not averse to an alliance with CPM to take on BJP.

CPM politburo member Surjya Kanta Mishra was quick to turn down the proposal of an alliance with Mamata on the ground that she was the one who gave BJP a toehold in Bengal. Sinha, on the other hand, said that Mamata's statement reflected the fear she had of BJP's rise in Bengal.

"The Trinamool chief thought that she could retain the minority votebank by donning a burqa or trying to curry favour with Muslim clerics by reaching out to them during namaz. But her bid to influence the Muslim population through a handful of clerics didn't work. As many as 1.75 lakh Muslims have voted for BJP when Mamata had taken them for granted. In Bengal, her sway over the 28% Muslim votebank has become unstable. This is what bothers her the most. Otherwise, with the Muslim votebank remaining intact, Trinamool planned to steer clear by manipulating a small percentage through rigging and intimidation," Sinha said.

The state BJP president remarked that Mamata had drawn inspiration from the "immoral alliance" between Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar in Bihar. "The Lalu-Nitish alliance may have worked to some extent in the bypolls, but it is not going to work in the long run. Mamata can't checkmate the BJP by tying up with the Left. The Left Front's strength has eroded in many areas. The alliance won't work in Bengal," Sinha said.

He cited an instance in which a Left Front municipality chairman had come to meet him. "The chairman came to my party office one day and told me that Trinamool was offering him money to change camps. He promised that he would join BJP along with all the board members if I matched the amount that Trinamool offered him. I told him that our party didn't believe in horse trading. I asked him why he was not joining Trinamool instead? Later, I found out that all his grassroots-level workers had already joined our party and the leaders stood no chance of winning the municipal polls," Sinha said.