In Bengal, Amit Shah sets new target for 2024 polls, says end Hilter-like regime

With a year to go for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, union home minister Amit Shah began the (Bharatiya Janata Party) BJP's campaign for the crucial battleground state of West Bengal, and told a rally in Birbhum's Siuri town that if voters could ensure they won 35 of the 42 seats on offer, it would lead to a collapse of the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC in the state.

In the 2019 elections, the BJP had won 18 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, its highest ever tally, up from the single seat that it had won in 2014.

Referring to the BJP's performance in the 2021 assembly elections where it became the principal opposition in West Bengal, winning 77 seats, Shah said, "Complete that beginning in 2024. Give BJP more than 35 seats and make Narendra Modi the Prime Minister once again. The only way to end the rule of lawlessness by Mamata Banerjee and her nephew is to usher in a BJP government."

In an 18-minute speech, Shah said that chief minister Banerjee ran a "Hitler-like regime" and pointed to the political violence during Ram Navami celebrations earlier this month.

"Don't people of Bengal have the right to celebrate Ram Navami peacefully? We saw the rallies being attacked in Howrah and Hooghly. TMC's politics of appeasement is responsible for this… People all over asked why should a temple for Lord Ram be built at Ayodhya. The Congress, Mamata Didi and their associates stalled it for years. But Modi Ji went to Ayodhya one day and laid the foundation stone. The critics were silenced," said Shah.

The home minister, who also garlanded a statue of B R Ambedkar and inaugurated a new party office in Siuri, targeted the TMC on a host of issues from alleged cattle smuggling to infiltration to a reported bribe-for-job case that are under investigation by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

"Only BJP can stop illegal infiltration from across the border. Bengal was once the nerve centre of India's freedom movement but now it is the centre of terror. The NIA (National Investigation Agency) has seized 87,000 kilos of ammonium nitrate from Bengal. The state has turned into a bomb factory," said Shah.

He added that "a man sent to jail in the cattle smuggling case is still the TMC president in Birbhum"- a reference to Anubrata Mondal, currently lodged in Delhi's Tihar jail.

"BJP will not let this Hitler-like regime continue. You (voters) can end it. I promise the next chief minister of West Bengal will be someone from the BJP. Can Mamata Didi give a befitting reply to Pakistan? Can she end terrorism in Kashmir? Only Modi Ji can do that," Shah said.

While he did not name TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, Shah called the TMC dynastic.

"When Modi Ji has ended dynastic rule in India, Mamata Banerjee's only aim is to make her nephew the next chief minister," he said.

The TMC reacted sharply to Shah's comments with TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh saying, "Only Amit Shah can make such an anti-democratic statement. What is the nation's home minister trying to indicate by saying that winning 35 seats in Bengal will lead to the collapse of an elected government? BJP targeted 200 assembly seats in 2021 but failed to achieve it."

Ghosh said that the Birbhum rally was a "flop" and said that people from Bihar had been ferried to the rally ground.

"He talks of Ram Navami violence. The man who was brandishing a gun at a Ram Navami rally was arrested from Bihar by the state police," said Ghosh.