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Entry into UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri triggers political slugfest between TMC, Congress
TMC Lok Sabha member Kakali Ghosh Dastidar, one of the leaders who visited Lakhimpur Kheri, told reporters that the team could make it because its members avoided attention from the moment they arrived in Lucknow on Monday.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) scaled up its criticism of the Congress on Wednesday, calling the national party a “loser”, shortly after Rahul Gandhi said in Lucknow that leaders from his party were prevented by the Uttar Pradesh government from travelling to Lakhimpur Kheri while TMC and Bhim Army teams reached the spot a day earlier.
Lakhimpur Kheri has become the destination for all anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) forces since the alleged killing of farmers on Sunday.
Focusing his attack on the Congress leader, TMC state general secretary and spokesperson Kunal Ghosh tweeted, “Rahul Gandhi should not try to confuse people by distorting facts. TMC will not accept any loose non-political comment from any part-time politician who has failed to combat BJP. We respect INC. We are in favour of non BJP unity. We are on the roads, not on Twitter only.”
Ghosh did not spare the Congress as well. “Rahul Gandhi should know: @AITCofficial MPs are in Lakhimpur after a long fight. In Tripura, BJP imposed 144 throughout Agartala only to prevent @abhishekaitc. INC is a loser in their traditional UP including Amethi. But TMC defeated BJP in Bengal. INC made Punjab a mess.”
The Bengal Congress countered Ghosh and his party with an equally sharp criticism.
“It is evident to people of this country that Congress has stood by farmers and emerged as the face of the anti-BJP force. It never compromised. The fact that TMC leaders were given a safe passage to Lakhimpur Kheri exposes the tacit understanding the party has with the BJP. This is how the BJP wants to weaken the opposition unity,” said Bengal Congress spokesperson Soumya Aich Roy.
TMC Lok Sabha member Kakali Ghosh Dastidar, one of the leaders who visited Lakhimpur Kheri, told reporters that the team could make it because its members avoided attention from the moment they arrived in Lucknow on Monday.
“There was not a single person to receive us at the Lucknow airport. We moved like common people from the very beginning. Policemen stopped our car when it was heading for Lakhimpur. I admit that we lied to them and said we were going to the Dudhwa National Park,” said Ghosh Dastidar.
Bengal’s ruling party started targeting the Congress after Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee announced on June 8 that the TMC would expand its base in other states and take the BJP head on in the upcoming assembly elections.
Since then, TMC has inducted Congress leaders and workers in Tripura and Goa.
Former chief minister of Goa, Luizinho Faleiro, and several former office-bearers of the Congress’ Goa unit, joined TMC in the presence of Abhishek Banerjee in Kolkata on September 29.
“Where is the Congress? On the ground, it is TMC that is facing the BJP and defeating it,” Abhishek Banerjee said recently, setting the tone of the rhetoric against the party that Mamata Banerjee left in 1998 to form the Trinamool Congress.
