‘Bengal gone, Didi looking outside’: PM Modi mocks Mamata over Varanasi challenge

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has sensed her defeat and therefore “Didi has turned jittery, criticising everybody and everything, from EC to EVMs.”

Alleging corruption in the Mamata Banerjee-led government, PM Modi said, “Didi has started a new tax in Bengal – ‘Bhaipo Service Tax’!”, adding that “For ten years, women, Dalits, backward classes, farmers and tea workers were subjected to injustices, but you chose to be a mute spectator.” This, he said, has led to a movement for a change.

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PM Modi also took a dig at TMC boss over a claim by some of her party leaders that the chief minister might contest elections from his Lok Sabha seat Varanasi in 2024. Didi has accepted a defeat here and is “now looking for a place for herself outside Bengal,” Modi said, who had won the Lok Sabha election twice from Varanasi in 2014 and 2019.

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Dismissing the Mamata Banerjee’s claim that social schemes started by her will be stopped if BJP comes to power, PM Modi said her claims were “false and baseless”, adding that “If anything is stopped, then that will be `Tolabaji’ (extortion) and cut-money (bribes).”

The assembly elections in West Bengal are being held in eight phases and the votes will be counted on May 2.