GUWAHATI: In election-bound Meghalaya on Wednesday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee declared that her Trinamool Congress (TMC) would drive out the BJP from the country by giving it a “political medicine” while Congress leader Rahul Gandhi likened the saffron party to a “class bully”. Addressing a rally, Banerjee appealed to people to vote for TMC, stating that it is the only alternative.
“When people have a disease, they want real medicine. Real medicine is our democracy – our vote. Cast your vote for TMC, we will give a political medicine to BJP and ‘wash’ it out of the whole country. I believe we can do this,” she said.
“We will show the way how BJP can be washed out of Delhi. It is a challenge that we will defeat BJP in the 2024 elections,” Banerjee said. Pillorying it on the Hindenburg report on industrialist Gautam Adani, she said nobody knows when the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) and the State Bank of India (SBI) would get closed down.
She asked the voters not to take money from BJP in the lead-up to the polls, cautioning that it might recover the same through ED and CBI by conducting raids at households.
Addressing a rally of the Congress, Gandhi said the BJP is like a class bully. “Many of you must have experienced a class bully. There is one fellow who thinks he is stronger than everybody and bullies everybody. One fine day, somebody in the class teaches him a good lesson and he stops. That is what BJP and RSS are,” the Congress leader said.
According to him, BJP and RSS think they know and understand everything and have no respect for anybody. He said the two could be fought collectively but in a non-violent manner. “The ideology of BJP, specifically RSS, is to try and destroy your culture, tradition, religion, and history."
"We are standing with you in this fight. We are not going to allow the ideology of the BJP to harm your language, tradition, religion, culture and history because, for us, that would not be India. India is not a hateful, violent and angry country,” Gandhi said.
He added unemployment and rising prices – particularly of petrol, diesel, LPG and food products – are the key issues that need to be tackled there.