“I do not dispute that Banerjee fought and won a tough fight in Bengal but who is fighting Narendra Modi in Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Assam? It is the Congress. She is looking at it from the Bengal lens,”
P. Chidambaram
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee may have won a tough battle in the Bengal polls, which ended in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat, but her outlook at taking on the BJP is “parochial,” former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said on Monday.
Chidambaram, who is the All India Congress Committee’s senior observer in-charge of the 2022 state Assembly polls in Goa, was responding to questions from the media about the remarks made by Banerjee last week when she said that the Congress’ indecision about entering into alliances with regional parties was making Prime Minister Narendra Modi all the more powerful.
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“I do not dispute that Banerjee fought and won a tough fight in Bengal but who is fighting Narendra Modi in Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Assam? It is the Congress. She is looking at it from the Bengal lens,” Chidambaram told a press conference in Panaji.
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“But if you look at all India, the party that is at the forefront against Narendra Modi, fighting, tweeting, addressing press conferences, agitations is the Congress,” he said.
Addressing a press conference in Panaji, Banerjee had said: “Modiji is going to be so powerful because of Congress. If one cannot take a decision (on alliances) why should the country suffer for that? They have got enough opportunities. Instead of BJP they contested against me in my state”.
The back and forth between Chidambaram and Banerjee comes at a time when both the parties, Congress and the Trinamool Congress, are campaigning in Goa ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls.
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