Won’t stop fighting BJP even if I am put in jail: Mamata

Kolkata: A day after Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee said that she won’t back down from fighting the BJP even if she is put behind the bars.

Banerjee was addressing a public meeting at Nadia’s Shantipur on Thursday. Referring to the arrests of her party members by the central agency in alleged corruption cases, Mamata said that she won’t cower even if she is put in prison. She, however, did not explicitly mention the arrest of Hemant Soren who was arrested on Wednesday night by the ED on charges of land-related corruption.

Reiterating her previous claims, she said that most of the corrupt politicians are part of the BJP which is trying to paint a picture where only Opposition parties are corrupted. She said: “It is surprising that the BJP is not even ashamed or showing any signs of remorse after looting the money of the people of this country.” Banerjee has maintained on earlier occasions that BJP functions like a washing machine where any politician with a tainted image can join and acquire a clean record by getting all the charges against them dropped.

Alluding to the arrests of her party members, she said that some in the party may have erred but that does not make everyone a thief in Trinamool Congress. She opined that if a party stays in power over a considerable period of time certain aberrations are bound to crop up. She said some people had entered her party from the CPIM and these are the ones who have committed misdeeds. Manik Bhattacharya, who was arrested in relation to the recruitment corruption in the state’s education sector, was a TMC MLA from Nadia.

Further, Banerjee said that no matter whether it’s coal or cattle smuggling, her party, TMC, gets blamed for it. She pointed out that the borders are guarded by the Border Security Force while the coal mines are guarded by the Central Industrial Security Force.

In connection with the alleged cattle smuggling case in Bengal, TMC leader Anubrata Mondal is lodged in Tihar Jail. In connection with the alleged coal smuggling case, TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee and state cabinet minister Moloy Ghatak were summoned on several occasions by the central probe agencies.