BJP’s carrot & stick for Mamata

The BJP’s lauding of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is considered significant in the light of reports that the party is wooing the Trinamool Congress ahead of the next Lok Sabha elections where the BJP-led NDA is scouting for alliances to secure a majority in the next Parliament.

Recently,the BJP decided not to field any candidate for the Howrah bypoll slated to vote for June 2. The party’s sudden last-minute decision not to field its candidate was seen as keeping its door open for aligning with the Trinamool for a later period.

Asked whom BJP supporters should vote for in the bypoll,Sinha today indirectly hinted at voting for the Trinamool in the triangular contest. “Ideally,we would want them to stay away from the polls but if they have to cast their votes,we will ask them to definitely avoid CPM and Congress,” Sinha said. However,he said both the UPA,which is celebrating its nine years of reign at the Centre,and the Trinamool,which completed two years in power in Bengal,were equally pathetic and riddled with corruption.

Sinha said BJP was the first political party which had warned the CPM government about the menace of chit fund companies and demanded a CBI inquiry into the Saradha Group scam.