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India won’t forgive Bengal if it doesn’t show right path to nation: Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi’s statement comes days after chief minister Mamata Banerjee ruled out seat adjustments between the Congress and the TMC in West Bengal for the coming Lok Sabha polls
India will not forgive Bengal if it does not show the right path to the nation, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told his followers at his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in the eastern state on Sunday evening, hours after Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar left the INDIA coalition.
Addressing a crowd from the top of an SUV in north Bengal’s Siliguri town, Rahul Gandhi made the statement days after chief minister Mamata Banerjee ruled out seat adjustments between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in her state for the coming Lok Sabha polls.
“No other state showed me as much love as you did. Bengal is a special place. People here took the lead in fighting the British. It is your duty to show the road to the nation just as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose or Vivekananda did. If you don’t, the country will not forgive you,” Rahul Gandhi said. His Yatra resumed in Bengal on Sunday after a two-day break.
The BJP won18 of Bengal’s 42 seats in 2019. Banerjee wants to contest all 42 including the two in control of the Congress, whose state president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is a bitter critic of the chief minister. Choudhury insists that the Congress must contest six to eight seats in the state. Rahul Gandhi’s yatra will cover some of these.
With Chowdhury by his side, Gandhi neither mentioned the crisis in Bihar nor the impasse over sharing seats in Bengal.
“The intellectual prowess of Bengal’s people is unique. This can unite the nation. This is your responsibility,” Gandhi said.
The comments appeared to political observers as a veiled appeal before Banerjee who, earlier this week, apparently went back on her offer to spare Bengal’s Berhampore and Malda South seats that the Congress has been winning since 1999 and 2009 respectively. Chowdhury holds the Berhampore seat.
Calling Nitish Kumar a “chameleon,” Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary in charge of communications, reiterated on Sunday that the TMC is a “pillar of the INDIA coalition.”
“We fight the Left in Kerala but at the national level we are all opposed to the BJP. Mamata Ji’s principal target is to defeat the BJP. So is ours,” he told reporters.
TMC leaders, however, stuck to their position saying the Congress should have removed leaders like Chowdhury in the interest of the alliance.
TMC Rajya Sabha member Santanu Sen said: “Rahul Gandhi rightly said that Bengal shows the way to the nation. Bengal showed how the anti-BJP movement should be taken forward. Mamata Banerjee named the coalition INDIA. But the Congress did not show the respect the other parties deserve. Acting like an agent of the BJP, Chowdhury was busy targeting Banerjee, using unparliamentary language. He should have been removed.”
