BJP will emerge a major force in Bengal: Advani

Madhuparna Das, ENS, Bhadreswar, April 18, 2014: BJP leader and chairman of the Parliamentary Committee L K Advani Thursday said the party would emerge a major force in Bengal — the state where the Bharatiya Jana Sangh was founded by Shyamapada Mukherjee in 1952  — demolishing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s claims that BJP was not a factor in Bengal in the Lok Sabha elections.

“BJP will emerge as a major force in Bengal. I am in the party since its inception,” he said L K Advani while addressing a campaign rally supporting two BJP candidates including Chandan Mitra from Hooghly and Bappi Lahiri from Serampore.

Terming this election as ‘an election that never happened in the country since 1952’, Advani said, “I have seen and participated in last 16 elections. There is something special about this election. People already know the results. Even Congress leaders tell me they will not be able to form the government this time. And the credit must go to the Congress government.”

Making an impassioned appeal for a violence-free elections, Advani said: “There is no place for violence during elections. But our CPM friends did that earlier and that had an effect on some other political parties as well,” he said and added there should be no space for a tainted leader this elections. “We do not encourage people with criminal antecedents. It will at least not happen in our party.”

Meanwhile, BJP candidate Chandan Mitra said the party plans to bring industry in Singur. “I have promised the people of Singur that they would not need to survive on the allowance given by the government. The land in Singur is now barren. No agriculture is possible and the industry is also driven out. How will people live there? But if we win here, we will bring IT here,” Mitra said.

Mocking Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s effort to form a Federal Front, BJP state president Rahul Sinha said: “Some say we always take Ram’s naam. Yes we do that. And Ram has shown his ‘leela’ at the Ram Leela Maidan when only  400 people turned up in the ‘so called’ meeting to form the Federal Front.