In contrast to the “Jai Shree Ram” sloganeering by the saffron party workers during Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s Dec 19 Bolpur roadshow, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday relied on Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and the Bengali culture to make her point in the raging insider-outsider debate by walking kms on the same land in Birbhum district.
Banerjee’s roadshow, which covered around three kms, started at Bolpur Dak Bungalow Ground and continued till Chowrasta.The CM, flanked by her party Trinamool Congress’ MP Satabdi Roy and folk singer Basudeb Das, on whose residence Shah had ate lunch on Dec 19, led a massive crowd turning the heat on in already potboiler West Bengal politics.With Tagore’s Bengali songs playing in the background, Banerjee occasionally carried the poet’s portrait in hand besides launching a fiercest attack on her adversary Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Countering Shah’s call to make West Bengal “Sonar Bangla” by voting for the BJP in the upcoming polls, Banerjee on Tuesday said, “Rabindranath Tagore already made Sonar Bangla. So no need to dream about new Sonar Bangla.”Taking a dig at the BJP leaders who often make faux paus over Bengali icons during state visits, the CM said, “The outsider BJP leaders had said that Tagore was born in Shantiniketan! They do not know Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji or even Gandhiji.”BJP national president Jagat Prakash Nadda had earlier wrongly claimed Visva Bharati in Santiniketan as Tagore’s birthplace.
Though Trinamool district president Anubrata Mondal claimed three lakh people came to Banerjee’s roadshow only from Birbhum, the BJP has claimed the crowd was pulled by threatening folks.The West Bengal politics is witnessing a stiff contest between the ruling Trinamool and its prime Opposition BJP, which is fighting with all its might to deny Banerjee a third straight term in power.
