BJP won't come to power in 2019 elections, says Mamata

Launching another scathing attack against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Thursday quoted a famous Bengali idiom on the tyrant ruler Kansa's destruction by Lord Krishna.

"Tomare bodhibe je, Gokule bariche shey" were her words indicating a befitting reply from Bengal to the BJP on its practice of divisive politics.

Taking the attack a step further, without naming BJP, Banerjee also said the party will not come to power in the 2019 elections. She was addressing a massive gathering at the DSA Stadium in Malda on Thursday afternoon.

Giving clean chit to party MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay against whom the CBI has filed a charge-sheet in the multi-crore Rose Valley scam and Firhad Hakim, against whom an FIR has been filed in connection with the Narada case, she said: "Sudipda and Firhad hail from well-to-do families and they cannot take Rs 1 lakh as bribe," she said adding: "If BJP arrests any of our party leaders, then the people of the country will send one lakh of their leaders to jail."

Banerjee is known for keeping facts ready on her fingertips and yet again on Thursday she made good use of them and awed the overwhelming crowd. She said a leader of BJP had said that Sudip Banerjee and Tapas Paul had been arrested by the CBI following instructions from the Prime Minister. This, when published in a newspaper, was contradicted by the party. "As a citizen of the country, I want to know who is correct."

Taking her attack to a new level, Banerjee said: "A leader who had been suspended from the party (BJP) for quite some time due to corruption is coming to Bengal quite often to scare us. We are not scared by their threats. The more you try to scare us, more will be our strength." Banerjee urged people to reply to the lies circulated by BJP "deliberately and in a systematic manner". She urged the students, youth and teachers to come forward and reply to the lies. "The students, teachers and youth will give befitting relies to the lies they (BJP) are spreading to weaken our society."

She alleged that BJP is spending crores of rupees in social media to circulate "lies and only lies." Giving examples, she said: "Taking snaps of some people who may lie down on the ground in Gangasagar mela, they will upload the picture captioned stampede in Gangasagar." She said recently, a person was murdered in Bangladesh and the picture of the victim was uploaded on Facebook with a caption "murder in Bengal". "The incident did not take place in Bengal and the whole world will believe that law and order situation has deteriorated in the state."

Challenging the claims of the BJP on the state government imposing restrictions on observance of Saraswati Puja in some areas, she threw a question at the gathered students and their parents who were present in the meeting: "Have you heard that the administration has stopped Saraswati Pujas in your areas?" The crowd answered in a negative and Banerjee said: "If I file defamation cases against them, they'll be in deep a soup. There should be limit to everything and they will be punished for the lies someday."