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KOLKATA: Senior BJP functionary and Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday said there was no need for President’s Rule in West Bengal as he was confident of the saffron party’s victory in 2021 assembly polls.
Addressing a press conference here on the second day of his Bengal visit, Shah also dropped hints that BJP would like to stick to the “Modi-Mamata binary” instead of projecting a new face (the chief ministerial candidate) months ahead of the polls. “There are states like Uttar Pradesh, where we won the elections without projecting a CM face,” he said.
“There is no point talking about Article 356 (President’s rule due to failure of constitutional machinery in a state) when we are going to form the government in April (next year),” Shah told reporters.
“You (voters) gave chances to Congress, the Communists and Trinamool to rule Bengal. Give us one chance. We will offer you good rule,” he said. Shah said he could sense the “public anger” against the present government. The BJP brass wants to focus on this “anger” to garner votes for the party. The home minister reiterated the Centre’s commitment to give citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries.
Earlier in the day, he promised as much to Matua community member Nabin Biswas of Baguiati’s Adarsha Pally, where he had lunch with Biswas’s family. Matuas are a subsect of the Hindu Namashudra community, who had migrated to Bengal from the erstwhile East Pakistan.
Shah, however, did not say whether the refugees would get citizenship before the polls. “I have a commitment to implement CAA in Bengal,” he said, adding: “The process of framing rules for CAA got delayed due to corona. We are committed to it.”
Prior to the lunch, Shah also went to the Matua Mahasangha Mandir at Gouranganagar, where he asked the community members to increase ground activity in support of CAA.
Based on the feedback of more than 180 BJP workers, who he met in Bankura and Kolkata, and conversations he had with a cross-section of people in the last two days, Shah hit out at the Trinamool government with three Ts: Tushtikaran (appeasement), tanasahi (autocracy) and tolabazi (extortion). “Administration is politicised, there has been criminalisation of politics and corruption has been institutionalised,” he said.
