KOLKATA: Two days after Union Home minister Amit Shah had lunch at the house of a tribal family in Bankura, local Trinamool Congress leaders met the family and offered them help. A local TMC leader went to the house of Bibhishan Hansda at Chaturdihi village, spent half-anhour and offered help for his teenage daughter, who is a diabetic patient and a student of Class-XI.
TMC leaders said winning the heart of tribal electorates in Junglemahal is crucial ahead of 2021 Assembly elections and the party will leave no stone unturned. ‘’Hansda’s family is in distress. Amit Shah visited their house and had lunch there but did not offer any help for the family.
He did not announce any financial package for the welfare of the scheduled tribe community,’’ said a TMC leader. The TMC received a massive blow in last year’s general elections in Junglemahal as BJP bagged all five Lok Sabha seats from the region.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said TMC’s trick of visiting Hansda’s house will not work. “The tribal people of Junglemahal drove out the ruling party in last year’s elections. The poor tribe rejected the TMC because of corruption among its satraps,’’ he said.
A day after Shah’s two-day Bengal visit, the party’s state leadership convened a meeting with its morcha functionaries. Shah also met those who defected from other political parties on Friday. “Shahji wanted to meet some of them personally when many others came on their own to meet him.
He directed us to involve all of those who joined the BJP from other organisations in the party’s regular affairs,’’ said Ghosh. Many leaders who defected to the BJP from TMC and CPI(M) alleged on several occasions that they had been sidelined by the saffron camp’s leaders.
TMC MP Manirul Islam from Labhpur, Birbhum, visited the party headquarters on Saturday and he was asked to get involved in regular activities in his area. Party workers have been directed to launch campaigns to highlight the government’s failure to curb crime against women.