Coochbehar/Thakurnagar/Chirang, Feb 11: Branding West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee a “failed administrator”, Union Home Minister Amit Shah Thursday said the upcoming assembly elections in the state will be a contest between Narendra Modi’s “development model” and her “destruction model” of governance.
In West Bengal, where the BJP has launched a political blitzkrieg against the Mamata Banerjee government, he raked up the issue of the TMC supremo’s opposition to the CAA, and asserted the contentious citizenship law will be enforced once the process of COVID vaccination has ended. Shah’s whirlwind tour of West Bengal and Assam was also marked by a social outreach to the numerically strong and restive Koch Ragbongshi and Matua communities whose concerns he sought to assuage. Shah claimed large-scale infiltration into West Bengal’s Coochbehar district, which shares border with Bangladesh, has caused significant changes to its demography.
The upcoming assembly polls, he said, will be a fight between the “Vikas (development) model of the Narendra Modi government and Mamata Banerjee’s Vinash (destruction) model”.
The home minister, who flagged off the fourth of the five ‘Parivartan Yatra’ of the BJP in Coochbehar ahead of the announcement of the assembly elections, said the campaign is not for changing a chief minister, MLA or minister but ending infiltration and transforming West Bengal’s condition.
Addressing a rally in the North Bengal town, he said the yatra is also aimed at ending corruption patronised by ‘Bua-Bhatija’ combine.
The BJP has been accusing Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek, the Lok Sabha MP from Diamond Harbour, of “institutionalising corruption”.
“You vote the BJP to power in Bengal. Leave alone illegal immigrants, not even a bird from across the border will be allowed to enter the state,” Shah said. Addressing another rally in Thakurnagar, a stronghold of the Matua community, Shah said the process of granting Indian citizenship to refugees under the CAA, including to the Matua community, will begin once the process of COVID vaccination has ended. (PTI)
