Akhilesh Yadav in Bengal, SP, TMC send message to Cong: Don’t act as Oppn big boss

The TMC announced that Mamata will be headed to Bhubaneswar next week to meet her Odisha counterpart and BJD chief Naveen Patnaik, followed by a trip to Delhi where she will meet Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal.

Addressing party workers ahead of the National Executive, Akhilesh said: “If we can defeat the BJP in Bengal, we will defeat them in Uttar Pradesh too. Our focus is to remove the BJP from Uttar Pradesh and the rest of the country.”

Pointing out that the TMC had won in Bengal defeating the BJP, he said: “Didi (Mamata) is fighting in Bengal, we are fighting in UP… Our party is with Didi. How can we be with the Congress?… We are equidistant from both the BJP and Congress.”

Mamata also held a meeting with her party leaders on Friday, after which TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay said the party was not looking at either the BJP or the Congress but would try and get together regional parties, even as he reiterated that the TMC was ready to fight alone in the state and at the national level. “We will increase our power and will implement our own politics and programme,” Bandyopadhyay said.

Referring to developments in Delhi, where the BJP has stepped up offensive against Rahul Gandhi in Parliament and outside, Bandyopadhyay said it was part of the BJP’s larger design.

“Rahul Gandhi made some comments abroad and the BJP will not let Parliament function till he apologises. This means they don’t want Parliament to function using the Congress. The BJP wants Rahul Gandhi to be the face of the Opposition so that it helps the BJP,” he said at a press conference, reiterating that it was too early to decide on a prime ministerial face for the 2024 election now.

The MP added that while the TMC had joined the Opposition meeting called by Congress leader Mallikarjun Khagre, the Congress should not feel “they are the big boss of the Opposition front”.

Another TMC leader, Chandrima Bhattacharya, said, “The Congress is messing up everywhere. Here, it is allying with the BJP and CPI(M) to topple our government. Why do we support the Congress?”

On whether this meant that the TMC would remain equidistant from the Congress and the BJP, Bandyopadhyay said: “Our party will fight against the BJP’s anti-federal and anti-democratic policies. We will create a precedent when it comes to fighting against the BJP. We are not saying that we will maintain equal distance from the Congress and BJP. We are neither saying that we will make a third front. We are only saying that our leader Mamata Banerjee will talk with other regional parties. We can only say that in the near future, there may be big things.”

TMC sources said that at the meeting, Mamata urged party leaders to concentrate their attack on the BJP at the grassroot level. She said the BJP was targeting TMC leaders as they were the biggest challenge for the BJP.

Akhilesh attacked the BJP for “misusing” Central agencies, including the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and CBI, against Opposition leaders. Speaking to reporters on arrival in Kolkata, he said the number of such cases was among the highest in Uttar Pradesh.

“The ED, CBI, Income Tax all are political. Still, fewer people are in jail in West Bengal. In Uttar Pradesh, so many SP supporters, MLAs are in jail under false and fabricated cases,” he said.

He went on to attack Congress governments of using the same tactics. “Earlier, when the Congress was in power in Delhi, it misused these institutions. Today it’s the BJP. But they must remember that whoever used the ED CBI, Income Tax (thus), had to eventually leave.”

The SP chief added that it was “a sad trend” that if a leader joins the BJP, the ED, CBI cases disappear. “You can see this in Bengal, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and UP.”

Even if the SP had one vote, it would fight to save the Constitution, Akhilesh said.

The SP leader said the party had deep links with Kolkata. “My father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) held many party programmes here. In culture, music, politics, Bengal has always shown people the way. Kolkata used to be the capital (of the country)… When we see the Central government now, privatising everything… we wonder what type of slavery they are pushing the country into. It is our responsibility to save the Constitution.”