Lagatar24 Desk
Kolkata, March 30: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sat overnight in front of Dr. BR Ambedkar’s statue on Red Road in the centre of the city, accompanied by a group of TMC officials and supporters under the spotlights of media cameras.
Banerjee, who is holding a two-day sit-in to protest what she claims is discrimination by the centre government against the state, changed her mind on Wednesday and urged all political parties in the nation to work together to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections the next year.
It was previously decided to maintain a neutral position towards both the Congress and the right-wing party in charge of India’s central polity.
At the protest location, the head of the Trinamool Congress was accompanied by numerous other party officials, including Firhad Hakim and Aroop Biswas.
The 30-hour protest by Mamata Banerjee is expected to end on Thursday at around 7 o’clock. According to a senior officer of the Kolkata Police, security precautions at and around the venue were increased in light of the presence of prominent politicians.
As a form of protest against the “stoppage” of funding from the Centre to the state for MGNREGA and other programmes run by the housing and public works departments, Banerjee began the sit-in on Wednesday at midday.
Banerjee had stated on Wednesday that the 2024 parliamentary elections will be a battle between the country’s citizens and the BJP and that all people of goodwill must come together to defeat the saffron party and protect the nation’s impoverished.
She compared the BJP to the two antagonists from the epic “Mahabharata,” “Dushasana” and “Duryodhana.”
“I urge every political party in India to unite to oust this ‘Dushasana’ BJP government. ‘This Duryodhana’ BJP should be removed from power to save the country’s common man as well as Indian democracy,” she said.
Since the Calcutta High Court gave the go-ahead for the panchayat elections scheduled for this summer, Kolkata has seen a surge of political activity.
With rallies by Banerjee’s nephew and TMC leader Abhisek, BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, and a march organised by the Left-Congress alliance, in addition to the sit-in, which has been attracting sizable groups of bystanders, the political zeal in the state has increased by a few notches.
