Varun Gandhi attacks Mamata, will BJP's plan in WB be in jeopardy?

Kolkata, Aug 13: Narendra Modi might discover an irritant in young BJP parliamentarian Varun Gandhi. The party's chief of the 2014 Lok Sabha poll campaign committee had expressed a soft stand on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, making experts speculative about the leader's aspirations to enter an alliance with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the state.

The party's national president, Rajnath Singh, also made soft observations on Banerjee during his visit to the state in recent times.

But his plan could be in jeopardy after Gandhi, who has been given the charge of West Bengal, for the next big polls, launched a scathing attack on Banerjee here on Monday. According to a Bengali report, the 33-year-old leader who was on his maiden visit to Kolkata as the in-charge, threatened to avenge the harassment of the party workers in hand of their ruling party supporters.

Gandhi asked Banerjee to lessen her 'arrogance', adding that the BJP will take revenge after it comes to power in six-months time. He said Banerjee was made a minister by leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani when nobody else was with her. It may be mentioned here that Banerjee, who became the chief minister of West Bengal in May 2011, decided to withdraw from the UPA government last September over the latter's unpopular decisions.

Since then, Banerjee's TMC has not joined any other alliance and the BJP leadership aims to convince her to join them. But Gandhi's open attack could put that plan in a spot.

The state BJP leadership said it is in favour of keeping an equidistance from both Banerjee and Left and backed Gandhi's onslaught.

Gandhi also asked the party workers in the state to work on the organisation. He advised party workers to stand by the common people and focus on 15 seats (West Bengal has 42 Lok Sabha seats) where the party has the brightest prospects and further narrow it down to five to six. The BJP currently has a single seat from West Bengal, which it had won in Darjeeling in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

OneIndia News