Suvendu Adhikari resigned from Trinamool Congress and joined BJP last week
Calcutta:
In his first rally after switching sides from the Trinamool Congress to the BJP, former West Bengal minister and former Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari called for the “parivartan of parivartan“
On the stand with the BJP head of state, Dilip Ghosh in Ketugram in Burdwan district, Mr. Adhikari said: “We will defeat them. We will win. We will build a new Bengal, a golden Bengal. We want a parivartan of parivartan. “
The word, parivartan, was the rallying cry of Mamata Banerjee in her campaign to topple the left in 2011.
The Trinamool Congress and Mr. Adhikari are ready for competitive demonstrations in the coming days. Trinamool Congress Deputy Sougata Roy and Chief Minister Firhad Hakim are in Adhikari’s home territory of Kanthi in the East Midnapore district tomorrow for a demonstration.
Mr. Adhikari will do a road show there on Thursday. There is concern that the two sides will be embroiled in clashes.
Adhikari’s departure has been dismissed as “a good way to get rid of liability” by the Trinamool Congress, which has challenged him to contest the 2021 elections in his former constituency, Nandigram.
Sougata Roy, who had tried to negotiate peace with Adhikari before he finally resigned, said: “Suvendu will be remembered as Mir Jaffar, Jagat Seth. He has betrayed the party.”
In his energetic speech on Ketugram, Adhikari said: “They are calling me Mir Jaffer, but what about them? They betrayed Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee. If the BJP had not supported Trinamool 1998 onwards, Trinamool would have already disappeared.”
Mr. Roy’s reply was curt. “Mamata Banerjee left Congress to form her new party. Suvendu didn’t have the guts,” he said.
Another thorny issue that Adhikari raised at his rally was Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and a deputy in the Trinamool Congress, whom the BJP and Mr. Adhikari call “bhaipo” or “bhatija” and accuse him of corruption.
“He has already supervised the cow trafficking and the theft of coal. If the Trinamool comes back to power, they will even steal kidneys,” Adhikari said, calling for “bhaipo hatoa” or “expelling nephew.
Sougata Roy said: “When they met during talks before he left Trinamool, Mr. Suvendu told Abhishek that he had no problem with him, that he realized that Abhishek never spoke ill of him. And now he is saying those things”.
In the Malda district of North Bengal, supporters of the Trinamool Congress have blackened several posters of Mr. Adhikari. Trinamool Congress MLA from Gajole in Malda district, Dipali Biswas, joined the BJP on December 19, along with Adhikari.
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