| Monday , December 1 , 2014 |
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Minus Bengal, job unfinished: Shah | ||||
| DEVADEEP PUROHIT | ||||
| WHO IS HE? I am Amit Shah (taking in from Mamata’s staging post a view only she could command once) | ||||
Calcutta, Nov. 30: The man Mamata Banerjee dismisses as “who is he?” introduced himself today from a launch pad she herself had built: “I am Amit Shah.” “Mein Amit Shah hoon…. Mein Bharatiya Janata Party-ka ek chhota karyakarta hoon. Aur mein aapko batana chahta hoon ke Bangal se Trinamul ko ukhar ne ke liye aaya hoon (I am Amit Shah…. I am a small BJP worker. And I want to tell you that I have come to uproot Trinamul from Bengal),” the BJP national president told a rally in front of Victoria House. Then he set out to reveal his party’s unfinished agenda. “We have won in Maharashtra and Haryana…. We will also win in Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi and Bihar. But we will consider ourselves victorious only after taking Bengal from Trinamul,” Shah said. Only time and organisational might will tell whether Shah can do in Bengal in the summer of 2016 what he did in Uttar Pradesh in the summer of 2014. But, for the Bengal BJP, that the rally could be held near Victoria House was in itself a cause for celebration as the Mamata government had gone out of its way to try to keep the venue out of its bounds. The spot outside Victoria House is from where Mamata used to launch her annual attacks on the Left while commemorating the victims of the July 21 police firing, making it a virtual staging post from where she prophesied in 2010 that “Writers’ will be ours”. BJP state president Rahul Sinha underscored the political significance. “We don’t want to hold rallies in the Dharmatalla area as it inconveniences people. But we decided to hold the rally (there today) because it is a Sunday. The other reason is, we wanted to protest the one-party hegemony at this place. We proved that we could do what we wanted,” Sinha said. Shah, before rolling out his introduction and his mission, said he felt the need to acquaint himself with the Bengal chief minister as she had been wondering aloud who he was. In his 35-minute address — during which he took a three-minute pause because of prayers from a nearby shrine — the biochemist from Gujarat who became an alchemist in Uttar Pradesh during the Lok Sabha polls outlined a road map. “The Calcutta Municipal Corporation polls are due in May…. I want the people of Calcutta to make a beginning, throw away Trinamul and choose a BJP mayor. Once the BJP comes to power in Calcutta, it will spread to the rest of Bengal,” he said. He launched a blistering attack on Mamata, highlighting Trinamul’s alleged involvement in the Saradha scam and the Burdwan blast. “The NIA is probing the Burdwan blast and it is emerging that TMC people had links with it. There is evidence that Saradha money had a role in the blast. The two probes seem to be converging,” said Shah. At the same venue, following Mamata’s declaration of an impending victory in the 2011 Assembly polls, a victory-eve countdown — which was a foregone conclusion by then — had started and celebratory roars had filled the air. Shah made similar claims, saying that the countdown to a change in Bengal had started. The audience cheered him on. “Amitji had been running a fever since last night as he had a procedure done to his teeth… still, he came and addressed the meeting because he has been very bullish. The turnout at the rally and the reaction of the people made him very happy and he is confident of succeeding in his mission,” said a source. Estimates of the turnout ranged from 1 lakh (quoted by police sources) to over 2 lakh (a figure cited by state BJP chief Sinha). The size of the gathering was impressive though it was smaller compared to any Trinamul show. Sinha later claimed that Trinamul had used various tricks — from threatening BJP supporters to stalling trains — to ensure a lower turnout. During her days in the Opposition, Mamata used to make similar allegations against the Left regime. But the Left was rarely accused of using wings of the administration to stop her rally. Today, almost all the speakers started their speeches with a reference to how the police, the civic body and the fire services tried to deny permission for the rally. “It was clear that the government did not want the rally to be held. It betrayed its fear of the BJP,” said Samik Bhattacharya, the BJP’s lone MLA in Bengal. Then he borrowed a line from Sholay: “Jo dar gaya, woh mar gaya.” Some Trinamul insiders too said that the government’s attempts to scuttle the rally had given the impression that the ruling establishment was afraid of the rise of the BJP. But a political scientist said: “With the opposition to Shah’s rally, Mamata wanted to communicate to her minority support base that she was the most effective opposition to the BJP. The opposition may have raised the profile of the event but Mamata may have been more interested in consolidating her minority base.” In an attempt to counter Mamata’s charge of attempts to polarise voters along communal lines, the BJP leaders kicked off the rally with the speech of a minority leader and offered help to “martyrs’ families” belonging to the minority community. “Sections of the minorities in some parts have switched to the BJP, which is a cause for concern for Mamata,” said another political scientist. Today’s rally may not be compared with the July 21 show in 2010 but there is little doubt that the battle for Bengal has become bipolar — between Trinamul and the BJP.
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BJP sets up hotline to Bengal- D FOR DAIS AND DIAL | |||
The BJP dais in front of Victoria House on Sunday promised a membership for every missed call to the number 18002662020. Metro dialled Code BJP to check if it works • The call gets automatically disconnected at first try • Within seconds comes a text that says: “Welcome to BJP. Your Primary Membership no. is xxxxxxxxxx. SMS your Name, Address and Pincode (if possible email and Voter ID) to 09242492424 to complete the process.” • A text with the required details is sent to the second number, which is immediately acknowledged: “Thanks for the info. Please ask family members, relatives and friends to give a missed call to 18002662020 to join the BJP. Chalo Chale Modi Ke Saath!” • Two calls from the same number do not mean two memberships. When Metro dialled the first number again, the reply read: “You are already a BJP member. Membership no. – xxxxxxxxxx. Please encourage your family, friends and relatives to join BJP by giving a missed call at 18002662020” ----------------------------------
After the rally ended, the BJP said that 1,32,000 people had enrolled through a missed call each or online in a span of 10 minutes, supposedly a record since Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated the membership drive on November 1. “In 10 minutes, while the rally was going on today, 1,32,000 people became members of the BJP, either through their mobiles or online,” state party president Rahul Sinha told a news conference. “This is a record. At the rally itself, thousands raised their hands when asked whether they would join the BJP.” The numbers might be disputed but many of those who attended the rally did get busy with their cell phones the moment Arun Singh, the BJP national secretary and one of the leaders in charge of the membership cell, shouted out to them from the dais to dial the number 18002662020 immediately and enrol themselves in the party. |
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