KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Saturday said the BJP would win only 100-150 Lok Sabha seats in the general elections next year as the anti-BJP alliance of regional parties would defeat the saffron party in most states, and exuded confidence that her party would win all 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Speaking during an event to mark the 25th anniversary of ‘July 21 TMC Martyr’s Day’ at Esplanade, the TMC supremo said that the no-confidence motion on Friday showed how the BJP was fast losing numbers and allies. “The BJP somehow managed to slip through no confidence motion by 325:126 votes. They pulled it off because of AIADMK’s support. Had Jayalalithaa been alive, the BJP would have never got their vote. But the BJP lost its oldest ally, Shiv Sena. The BJP is fast losing numbers and allies. It does not have a majority in Parliament. It won the no confidence motion through some votes of ‘acquaintances’,” she said.
The chief minister made some interesting predictions for the Lok Sabha elections. “MK Stalin (DMK working president) will defeat AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. In UP, if Akhilesh and Mayawati come together, their alliance will win 50 of the 80 seats that BJP won in 2014. In Madhya Pradesh, BJP will win only eight of the 28 seats it won in 2014. In Rajasthan, they will win only five of the 25 seats they won in 2014. They will score a duck in Gujarat. Lalu ji in Bihar, Naveen Patnaik in Odisha and Amarinder Singh in Punjab will decimate BJP. The 300 seats they have today will become at most 150 in 2019 Lok Sabha elections,” she added.
Some 12-15 lakh TMC workers from across the state congregated in Kolkata on the occasion. The TMC supremo called for an even larger mobilisation during the ‘oust BJP rally’ on January 19.“All anti-BJP parties of the Federal Front will converge at Brigade Parade Grounds on January 19 next year, from where we will give a call for dislodging BJP from power in Lok Sabha elections with Bengal showing the way,” she added.
Sources revealed that Mamata Banerjee was likely to send invitations to former Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Left Front leaders to the Federal Front rally. However, she also targeted the Congress on its purported ‘dual face’. “Congress can’t have two faces in Delhi and Bengal. On one side they ally with BJP and CPM against us in panchayat elections in Bengal and in Delhi they pretend to be our ally. Congress has to be very clear whom they want to ally with.”
Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she said: “He considers himself a bigger dictator than Hitler and Mussolini. A person who still has blood of riots on his hands will come to my state and preach intolerance and I will have to tolerate that? Impossible!” “India is going through a constitutional crisis. Democracy was never threatened as it is now.”