Trinamool Congress’s parliamentary party leader, Derek O’Brien, has said that the West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, will do what ‘it takes to remove the BJP’ from the Centre.
Speaking exclusively at the Janta Ka Conclave, O’Brien said, “Kursi mein kucch nahi rakha hai. But she (Mamata) will do what it takes to remove the BJP. “
Stressing on the need for a united opposition, O’Brien said that the Bengal chief minister had the ‘gravitas’ to bring together opposition parties with different ideologies on a single platform.
He said, “You need somebody with the gravitas to pull this off. How do you get the SP and the BSP to work together? If Mamata Banerjee reaches out to the SP and the BSP to work together, she has a far better chance of getting the SP and the BSP to work together. If I try and become a tennis coach and if Roger Federer tries to become a tennis coach, Roger Federer has that gravitas, he has that credibility in the tennis world. So I think Mamata di is now on top of her game.”
O’Brien also lashed out at the BJP government at the Centre for making a mess of the economy through flawed economic policies including demonetisation and the ‘hasty’ rollout of the GST. He also said that the unity among the opposition parties had BJP ‘in trouble.’
“Imitation, they say, is the best form of flattery. The Opposition did a press conference a few days ago. Ghulam Nabi Azad ji, Sharad Yadav Ji and I addressed the press conference. That was just three of us. That was the voice of 17-18 political parties. Obviously, the coordination was done by the president of the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi. We, the Trinamool Congress under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee, have 47 MPs. So, obviously we have a large number of MPs. We came up with this idea of Black Day; 48 hours later, the BJP come up with something called ‘anti black money day’ on the 8 November. You know you’ve got under their skin because when you start copying opposition ideas, you know the BJP is in trouble.”
Last year on 8 November, Modi had shocked the nation by declaring 86% of the currency in circulation illegal. His decision had adversely impacted the growth of the Indian economy. Calling demonetisation the scam of the century, O’Brien said that the BJP had no story for the economy.
He said, “Where are the jobs? What’s the state of the economy? What’s the situation after demonetisation? What a disaster after a hasty GST rollout? What about the farmers’ suicides? I think these are the issues, be it the Congress, the Trinamool, the RJD, the DMK, the SP, the BSP, the AAP, need to keep focussing on. Because the BJP don’t have a story for the economy…The BJP don’t have a story for the scam of the century, demonetisation.”
You can full interview below;
