BJP has no chance in 2021 Assembly elections, says Firhad Hakim

KOLKATA: With BJP having no political ground in Bengal the party has no chance whatsoever to come to power in the 2021 Assembly elections, feels Urban Development and Municipal Affairs minister Firhad Hakim.

In an exclusive interview to Millennium Post, Hakim said: "Immense development work has been carried out by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and people will vote for Banerjee in gratitude. People have already seen how the BJP is trying to communalise each and every incident and trying to propagate fake information through social media."

Regarding the recent Nabanna Abhiyan, of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) workers, where BJP workers claimed that police unnecessarily stopped the mob when they initially started with a peaceful protest, Hakim said: "Police will take action according to the footage received by them. I do not want to comment on this matter as the matter is being taken up by the administration and the administration has dealt the matter in their own way."

Quoting Abraham Lincoln he said: "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time. But you cannot fool all the people all the time."

When asked whether internal feud inside Trinamool Congress has been controlled after Banerjee hired poll strategist Prashant Kishor, Hakim said: "In any big political party ego problems remain and so it's natural to have internal feud inside the party. But it has been controlled to large extent."

Rubbishing allegations of BJP MP Arjun Singh who was once a TMC strongman that Hakim's people killed Manish Shukla and he will take revenge, Hakim said: "Singh has gone mad. CID has already taken over the charge of the investigation of Shukla's murder case and hopefully the accused will be identified. It was a power struggle between BJP leaders that led to the murder of Shukla."

With Hakim facing flak from its own minister Sadhan Pande over lack of planning in dealing with the Cyclone Amphan crisis, Hakim said: "After the Cyclone Amphan ravaged parts of Kolkata and several districts, 300 tress were uprooted. Within three days, the work to clear the trees was done by our KMC workers and consequently the process to plant trees was started. Now you will see that trees were planted where it was uprooted and we tried our best to finish the work within a short span of time."

According to Hakim he wants to thank the KMC workers for providing support at a time when Corona and Cyclone Amphan gripped Bengal at the same time. The workers worked 24*7 to clear the debris from the roads to avoid inconvenience for the commuters.