JOIN USTMC regional party, national ambitions will fall flat: Dilip Ghosh
The West Bengal BJP on Wednesday mocked Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's ambition to reach out to people outside the state ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, asserting that her Trinamool Congress is a "regional party" that is only interested in attacking political rivals.
Dilip Ghosh, the BJP's state unit chief, said plans to make TMC a national party were rejected by the people of the country in the past, too.
"Trinamool is a regional party, which only knows how to carry out attacks on political rivals. It misinterprets electoral triumph as the license to burn, loot and kill.
"Since the last two months after its victory in Bengal, the party has failed miserably in governance, and only attacked houses of our 'karyakartas'... Neither the TMC nor its chief Mamata will be accepted by the people of India," Ghosh said during a virtual address on the occasion of the BJP's 'Shahid Shraddhanjali Divas'.
Echoing him, opposition leader in the state assembly, BJP's Suvendu Adhikari said TMC's dreams to establish presence in states like Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat "is like attaching a headlight on a bullock cart. It will not succeed".
Banerjee, who has emerged as the doughtiest opposition face after her resounding victory in the West Bengal assembly polls, apparently seeks a larger role in national politics whose part she has been for decades in the past, and will likely try to use the visit to rally other anti-BJP parties behind her.
Addressing the Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata online, the TMC boss highlighted the "threat" posed by the BJP to Indian democracy and called for opposition unity.
Opposition parties cannot afford to lose time and should start planning for the general elections from now, she said.
In her speech that was beamed live in Punjab, Tripura, Tamil Nadu, New Delhi, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, Banerjee recalled how she fought the assembly elections against "money, muscle and mafia power" and won.