West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said she and her counterparts in neighboring Bihar and Jharkhand will join hands with many other opposition parties to oust the Bharatiya Janata Party from power in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Speaking on a party programme in Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee, also the Trinamool Congress supremo, said that the Bharatiya Janata Party would face a rout because of its arrogance and people’s anger.
"In 2024, Nitish Kumar, Hemant Soren, and I will get together. To defeat the BJP, all opposition parties will work together. We will all be on one side, while the BJP will be on the other. The BJP's conceit of winning 300 seats will be its downfall. In 2024, "Khela Hobe" will occur, she said.
The TMC's battle cry during the tense Assembly elections last year, in which the party overcame the BJP to seize power for a third straight term, was "Khela Hobe" (game is on).
The "arrest of Jharkhand MLAs with gobs of cash by Bengal police lately," put an end to horse trade in the neighbouring state and saved the Hemant Soren government, she said.
After their vehicle was stopped on July 30 in West Bengal's Howrah district at Panchla and about Rs 49 lakh in cash was found in the car, three Congress MLAs from Jharkhand were detained. They claimed, the funds were intended to be used to purchase sarees for an Adivasi celebration in their state.
The Congress, which is a part of the JMM-led government in Jharkhand, has claimed that the BJP allegedly offered the MLAs Rs 10 crore apiece and cabinet berths in an effort to unseat the Hemant Soren government The BJP believes it can threaten us using the CBI and ED. They will be closer to losing the Panchayat election next year and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, she warned, if they continue to use similar tactics.
Following the detention of senior party officials Partha Chatterjee and Anubrata Mondal by federal authorities in connection with various cases, she accused the opposition, particularly the BJP, and a portion of the media of launching a vicious campaign against her and her party's leaders.
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