West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, was in Patna on Wednesday as part of her roadshow against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation plan.
As expected, the firebrand leader did not get much response from her Bihar counterpart, Nitish Kumar.
Addressing a rally, Banerjee called Kumar a traitor without taking his name, “anyone who turns out to be a traitor, I cannot comment more on that.”
She did not stop here. In another jibe targetted at Kumar, Banerjee said, “at a time when Bihari migrant workers are losing jobs, going without food all the over country, they should be supported by their leaders.”
She dubbed the demonetisation drive as “super Emergency” and vowed to agitate against it till a rollback of the decision.
“The government has taken away the freedom from the people that they have been enjoying for the past 69 years. The government has snatched ‘Roti, Kapda aur Makan’ from the people… A people’s movement was started during the Emergency days… Today, the situation is even worse than Emergency, it can be termed as super Emergency,” the Trinamool Congress supremo was quoted by PTI.
“People are facing difficulties and inconveniences. They (NDA Government) have sold the country. It is the duty of political parties to raise their voice for the people and we will continue with our agitation till the government takes a decision to roll back the demonetisation move,” she said.
Mamata was addressing a gathering here in the course of her party’s nationwide campaign against demonetisation.
Raising the the issue of funding of PM Modi’s public meetings in foreign countries, she asked “From where do they get money to hold such mega public meetings in foreign countries like the US?”.
She also raised issue of registration of land by BJP in Bihar for opening offices in districts and displaying deed numbers of land purchased by the BJP, questioned the PM’s intentions as to how could BJP buy huge chunks of land in the month of September, a few weeks before the announcement of demonetisation on November 8.
Without naming anyone, Banerjee said, “If someone comes with us, then it is good. But, it certainly pains us if someone is not with us in the struggle for common people. This is people’s cause. People will not forgive ‘gaddars’ (betrayers).”
Mamata, who arrived in the state capital yesterday, also met RJD chief Lalu Prasad at the latter’s residence.
The ruling JD(U) has already made it clear that it would not be present at Banerjee’s agitation programme in the light of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s support to demonetisation.