KOLKATA: Amid back-to-back exits of TMC members from the party, its Lok Sabha MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar on Friday accused the BJP of luring leaders to the saffron camp with tall promises, and said it was a "way of getting back" at the Mamata Banerjee-led dispensation, which has been vocal against the Centre's "disastrous" policies.
Addressing a press meet, Ghosh Dastidar said the BJP, despite all efforts, would never be able to match up to the development work and pro-people policies of the TMC government, and hence was trying to swell the ranks by engineering rift within the ruling party.
"The BJP is a party known for its falsehood. They are against Mamata Banerjee as she has been the most strident critic of the economic disaster caused under the Narendra Modi regime. She has been a vocal critic of the NDA government's decisions, including sale of PSUs. Hence the BJP is getting back at her. It is luring TMC leaders to the saffron camp with tall promises," Ghosh Dastidar said.
Asked about the leaders who recently resigned from primary membership of the TMC, the MP said, "There are some who wish to do certain things in a certain manner for personal gains, something which our party wouldn't allow as Didi (Mamata Banerjee) believes in transparency."
Others who left the party are afraid that they might not get a ticket in the hustings, the senior TMC leader told reporters at the party headquarters here.
Taking a dig at the saffron camp, she said that posters put up in Santiniketan, announcing Union Home Minister Amit Shah's scheduled tour of Birbhum district, has Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's picture "juxtaposed" with other BJP leaders.
"Those who do not know Tagore well, those who vandalised the bust of Vidyasagar and have little knowledge about Birsa Munda are now putting up hoardings in the abode of Tagore, juxtaposing his image with BJP leaders.
People of Bengal won't accept a force that doesn't have any idea about the culture and heritage of Bengal," she said.
State BJP leadership, however, said that the party did not put up any such poster, and alleged that the TMC might have done it to "give the saffron camp a bad name".
A bust of polymath Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar was desecrated in 2019 during a melee, when Shah had taken out a rally in the city, ahead of the last phase of general election.
In yet another row, Shah, during his visit to the state last month, apparently garlanded a statue of a tribal hunter under the impression that it was that of freedom fighter Birsa Munda.
The TMC hit out at Shah for the "faux pas", but the BJP maintained that the statue was that of Munda.