Reverberations of Bharatiya Janata Party’s explosive victory in the Communist bastion of Tripura yesterday were felt in West Bengal also as chief minister Mamata Banerjee lashed out at Congress and Left parties for the results.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief first attacked Congress president Rahul Gandhi for not heeding to her suggestion of fighting polls in alliance with her and other local parties. She said her seat sharing formula of 14 seats for TMC, 16 for local hill parties and the remaining 30 seats for Congress could have been a game-changer in Tripura, but Gandhi “supplied oxygen to the BJP” by doing nothing about it.
She said that since her party does not possess a significant presence in the North-Eastern state, an alliance with a national party like Congress and several other tribal outfits could have offered a viable alternative to citizens as opposed to the incumbent Left and a fast-emerging BJP. She had even offered to personally campaign there, but Congress paid no attention to her requests.
Landing strong punches on the Left front next, Banerjee blamed them for “surrendering themselves” to the BJP when they should have ideally raised the saffron party’s attempts to pump in money, use Central forces and tamper with voting machines to win the elections.
She highlighted the fact that anti-incumbency against Manik Sarkar’s two-decade old CPI-M rule was bound to affect the Left’s chances, yet they performed well by containing BJP’s vote share to a difference of just five percent. But, they still lost because they never showed any “seriousness” in resisting BJP’s rapid growth in Tripura.
The Bengal chief minister ruled out BJP’s chances of repeating their electoral victories in other states next, especially in her own state, claiming that they will now lose in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and even in next year’s crucial general elections.