Mamata Banerjee hits streets over LPG crisis, slams BJP for price hike of cooking gas

A day after the Election Commission announced the schedule of polls in West Bengal, Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress Supremo, Mamata Banerjee, hit the streets on Monday, accusing the Union Government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party of artificially creating a crisis of Liquefied Petroleum Gas and raising the prices of domestic and commercial cooking gas.

Mamata also hit out at the Election Commission for replacing Nandini Chakravorty with Dushyant Nariala as the chief secretary of the state late at night on Sunday.

“They removed Nandini Chakravorty from the office of the chief secretary around midnight, without consulting the state government. She is a Bengali woman, and the way she was removed exposed their misogyny,” said the TMC chief, who led her party’s campaign over the past four months, accusing the EC of conducting the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in West Bengal to ensure advantage for the BJP in the assembly elections in the state.

As the Model Code of Conduct came into effect in West Bengal immediately after the announcement of the schedule of elections on Sunday, the EC appointed Sanghamitra Ghosh as the principal secretary of home and hill affairs, removing Jagadish Prasad Meena as the home secretary. “Not only has a Bengali bureaucrat been removed, but a non-Bengali officer has also been removed from the office of the home secretary. His removal reflects their deep disdain for the efficient officers of West Bengal,” the chief minister said.

The EC appointed Siddh Nath Gupta as the Director General of Police, replacing Peeyush Pandey and Ajay Kumar Nand as the Commissioner of Police in Kolkata, replacing Supratim Sarkar. The commission also replaced several senior police officials of the state.

The TMC MPs also protested the late-night removal of the senior officials of the state government in the Rajya Sabha and staged a walkout.

“The LPG crisis is artificially created by disabling oil company servers,” she said about the fear of scarcity of cooking gas. “I have spoken with their representatives, and there is no real crisis of gas,” said Mamata, who earlier led a rally of the TMC supporters, mostly women with placards holding the BJP-led government at the Centre responsible for the cooking gas crisis.

She called upon people of West Bengal to boycott the BJP and said that the TMC would rout the saffron party and have a landslide victory in the assembly polls, scheduled to be held on April 23 and 29.