Soma Mookherjee
KOLKATA, 8 FEB: Lashing out at the Congress Trinamul Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said one cannot depend on the Congress. “We have waited long enough from 2014. I will point out that in every election post 2014, Congress has lost over 90% of the polls. We will go to states where the opposition is weak, be it Goa, Karnataka, Tripura or Meghalaya,” said Mr Banerjee.
“If Congress had chosen a candidate against Mamata Banerjee in the Bhowanipore bypolls, instead of a winning margin of 98,000, Mamata Banerjee would have won by 92,000 votes. Congress not selecting a candidate for a bypoll wasn’t any gesture from them, their gesture was needed in 2021, assembly poll not in the bypolls. In 2021 state polls, they allied with the Left to halt TMC and help BJP to win. They need to understand this,” said Abhishek Banerjee.
He also asked to show a single Press Conference where Adhir Choudhury spoke against Amit Shah. Congress should remember a friend in need is friend indeed.
When Congress was needed by TMC, they allied with the Left. It was so funny, in Kerala, they were fighting the Left and in Bengal, they were partner, he said.
Regarding the allegations of poaching of Congress leaders, “I want to be very clear on the subject that you can’t poach a two-term chief minister like Luizinho Falerio. Or a senior leader-like Sushmita Dev. They want to join AITC voluntarily,” he said.
While stating about the Goa, where Assembly poll is imminent, Mr Banerjee said,”I am a practical person.. Goa is a small state of 40 seats, with over just 22 lakh voters. In 2017, the single largest party was Congress. But Congress could not stake claim to form the government in Goa because of its ineptness.
On the allegations of AITC having a setting with BJP to save its leaders from ED and CBI, he said, “I want to say that let the Congress warriors fight on Twitter, We will fight on ground in Tripura and defeat the same BJP which the Congress claims AITC has a setting with.”
If AITC wanted to harm the Congress, AITC would have gone to Chhattisgarh.It is closer to Bengal and Congress is in power in the state. The fact remains that Congress failed to keep its stock together in Goa and BJP formed the government in the state because of Congress’ ineptitudeness.
Within three months in Tripura, AITC managed over 24% votes. Show me another example of such a performance by a political party elsewhere in the country, he said.
All India Trinamul Congress is not going to other states to increase 2% vote-share or have 1-2 MLAs in the state, we are going to fight for the people and serve the, Abhishek Banerjee clarified.
“What’s the problem if Akhilesh Yadav is the face of the opposition? Defeating BJP is important and, not becoming the face of Opposition. How many times has Rahul Gandhi gone to Uttarakhand? Congress knows they’re second to BJP and they are happy with it. But they become annoyed when someone fights the BJP, they don’t want to be number three,” he said.
“Our biggest challenge in the new states has been to start from Zero. We didn’t even have a working committee in the states that we went to fight polls. But now we do, and I promise, this time we won’t go back after three months”, he added.
TMC is starting from scratch in Goa, it is obvious that some leaders that came to the party in the anticipation of a ticket, will leave and when they see they aren’t getting ticket, Mr Banerjee said.
Tags: #TMC #AbhishekBanerjee #Goa #Congress #BJP