West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee addresses party workers convention in North Dinajpur district on Wednesday
Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee today warned that Darjeeling cannot be allowed to go the Andhra Pradesh way, asserting she would not give an inch of land away from West Bengal till she is alive.
"Till I am alive, I will not give an inch of land this way. In the interest of politics, the land cannot be ceded this way. If you think that you will play the same game as you did in Andhra Pradesh, you will not succeed," she told an election meeting.
Ms Banerjee's attack followed BJP vice-president and the party's Darjeeling Lok Sabha candidate S S Ahluwalia's support for the formation of a separate state of Gorkhaland.
At a news briefing in Darjeeling today, Mr Ahluwalia said, "The BJP has always supported creation of smaller states as Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh and was in favour of Telangana and so Gorkhaland should also be formed."
Ms Banerjee accused the Congress and the BJP of making an understanding over the Telengana Bill and said that any attempt to divide West Bengal would not be allowed.
"It depended on the state government whether a state would be bifurcated or not and that is only after consulting the state government on the issue," she pointed out.
Accusing the BJP of pursuing "communal and divisive" politics and the Congress "anti-people policies", she said that there was a need for a change in the government.
"There is a politics to make money and corruption and there is a politics to divide the people on communal lines," she told the rally.
"There are no differences between the Congress and the BJP. The BJP only attacks the UPA government when elections are round the corner," she said.
The Trinamool chief defended her parting of ways with the NDA on communal issues and walking out of an alliance with UPA in 2012 over the FDI in retail.
Ms Banerjee who had stormed out of the NDA after the Tehelka expose in 2001, said, "We (Trinamool Congress) were in NDA for one year. We left it when we saw that in different ways attempts were made to communalise society."
Claiming that the Trinamool Congress was the only party which followed ideals, she said, "We never maintain double standard. What we say we do. And what we do we do it direct. We maintain transparency."
She also defended quitting the UPA, saying she did it in 2012 over the issues of retail in FDI, rise in the prices of diesel, petrol and lowering of the cap of subsidised LPG cylinders.
Claiming that the BJP won't get a single seat out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, Ms Banerjee said the party would try to divide the voters on communal lines in a bid to split the Trinamool Congress votes to benefit the CPI(M) and the Congress.
She expressed confidence that the Trinamool Congress would emerge as the third largest party after the election and that "TMC will play the most important role in the formation of the government".
Ms Banerjee urged voters to elect former Union minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi's brother Satya Ranjan, who is the TMC candidate for the Raiganj Lok Sabha seat in North Dinajpur district, where her most vocal critic Deepa Dasmunshi is seeking re-election.
In an apparent reference to Deepa Dasmunshi's battle with the state government over setting up of a proposed AIIMS-like hospital in the area, the West Bengal Chief Minister said, "Ever since Singur and Nandigram, we have repeatedly said that we will not take land forcibly."
She said that after the Trinamool Congress government came to power it had decided to set up a multi-speciality hospital in the constituency.
She said that farmers were suffering for the Centre's not making 100 per cent use of jute bags, but though some of the MPs had won in north Bengal in Congress tickets they had done nothing.
"North Bengal continued to be neglected for years. It is only after our government came to power, we had undertaken several schmes for rapid development in north Bengal and even we have set up a secretariat for north Bengal," she said.
Trinamool leaders said that like in other parts of north Bengal, the party is making steady inroads into north Bengal and pointed to last year's panchayat poll results.
Addressing a worker's meet at Malda later, she claimed, "We are the only state which has implemented the Sachar Committee recommendations 101 per cent and not 100 per cent."
"Congress remembers minorities only when election comes. This is what they have been doing for the last 66 years," she said.
"Congress, BJP and CPI(M) are the same," she said alleging a collusion of these three parties in West Bengal to take on Trinamool Congress.
"The Centre takes away Rs 40,000 crore from our state every year as taxes and in return give only Rs 8,000 crore as percentage of SSA, NREGA and JNNURM, while the rest is provided by the state," she said.
Claiming that the TMC government has initiated a barrage of development projects in Bengal after coming to power in 2011, Banerjee said "in 66 years, 38 colleges were set up in the state and only three of that during the Left Front regime of 34 years.
"In just two and a half years, we have started 31 government colleges and 14 private colleges," she said.
Claiming that the TMC has fulfilled most of the promises it made in its manifesto before the Assembly polls in 2011, Banerjee said, "3.2 crore people in the state now get rice at Rs two per kg."