Trinamul Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee today urged the people of Cooch Behar not to believe what they hear but judge the actual situation before casting their votes in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election.

Cooch Bihar is going to vote on 19 April. Mr Banerjee was addressing a rally at Cooch Behar this afternoon.

Mr Banerjee said the people of Cooch Behar had voted for Nisith Pramanik of BJP in 2019. “After winning the election, he became a minister of state for home affairs and never visited the villages under his constituency in the past five years. Now, he has asked people to vote for him. Think before casting your votes,” Mr Banerjee said.

Coming down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his statement that people who eat fish are anti-national and anti-Hindu, Mr Banerjee urged the people who eat fish to raise their hands and asked the electronic media to put the focus on them. “I eat fish every day. Who is he to decide our food habits,” he said.

Mr Banerjee said the Prime Minister has said that what people have seen in the past 10 years is just a trailer, and the real movie will start after the 2024 election. “Trailer is seen for two-and-a-half minutes and then the movie starts with a duration of two-and-a-half hours. We have seen in the trailer that the price of essential commodities have skyrocketed in the past 10 years. The price of cooking gas, which was Rs 400 per cylinder, 10 years ago, now costs Rs 1,000. The price of a litre of petrol which was Rs 50, now costs Rs 100. It has become impossible for the middle class to run the household.”

He said the BJP has refused to accept his challenge to publish a white paper to declare the amount the BJP-led Centre released under Awas Plus since 2021. “Modi’s guarantee is full of false promises. The Centre did not release the money under MGNREGA, but the state government has released money for 69 lakh job card holders. In Cooch Behar, 4.97 lakh job card holders have received money. Rest assured, if the Centre does not pay the money, the state government will pay the first instalment of Awas Yojana by 31 December.”

Criticising a BJP leader, who has said that if BJP gets 35 seats in Bengal, Lakshmir Bhandar will be stopped within three months, Mr Banerjee said, “This is the vengeance politics of the BJP.”

Mr Banerjee said the BJP is fast losing ground in Cooch Behar and urged people to cast their vote in favour of Trinamul Congress to keep the developmental projects continue.