TMC plans meets near Modi rally...BJP ALLEGES PLOY TO PREVENT PARTICIPATION IN PM PROGRAMME AT MAYNAGURI

ANIRBAN CHOUDHURY & MAIN UDDIN CHISTI, TT,  Alipurduar/Cooch Behar: Two Trinamul public meetings have been lined up within 55km of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rally in Jalpaiguri's Maynaguri on Friday.

Apart from the Trinamul meetings in Alipurduar's Falakata and Cooch Behar's Mathabhanga, the party has planned sit-ins across Bengal for the next two days starting Thursday with a vow to "save the country and the Constitution." BJP leaders have alleged that the Trinamul meetings have been planned to prevent them from taking people to the Prime Minister's rally.

"It is possibly the first time Trinamul has planned meetings in neighbouring districts on the day the Prime Minister will be in Maynaguri," said a political observer.

Churabhandar in Maynaguri, the venue of Modi's meeting, is around 36km from Falakata and 53km from Mathabhanga.

When the Prime Minister was in North 24-Parganas' Thakurnagar on Saturday, Trinamul had not organised BJP leader Mukul Roy in the Jalpaiguri district party office on Wednesday. (Biplab Basak) any meeting in neighbouring areas. It did so three days later, on Tuesday, when it held a meeting in Thakurnagar in an effort to counter the BJP's efforts to consolidate the Matua votes.

The BJP has time and again accused Trinamul of using the administration to pose deterrents for them either by denying permission to land choppers of their leaders or to hold a meeting in a ground that is under the administration or local authorities like civic bodies and educational institutions.

It has also accused the ruling party of Bengal for provoking land owners to deny land to BJP for the meeting and for intimidating transporters to prevent BJP from hiring vehicles.

Trinamul has brushed aside such allegations. The party has also adopted a strategy hold meetings at the same venues where BJP has held rallies. "It will be clear on February 8 that even if a block level leader of our party speaks at a meeting, the turnout is higher than the number of people who were there when Rajnath Singh had spoken," said NB development minister Rabindranath Ghosh. The Union home minister had addressed rallies in Falakata and Mathabhanga on Saturday.

BJP leaders alleged a ploy. "These meetings have been planned to create tension in Alipurduar and Cooch Behar which can and discourage many from attending the PM's meeting. Trinamul leaders will also start hiring vehicles on the pretext of the meetings to create an artificial shortage," said Gangaprasad Sharma, the BJP chief of Alipurduar.

In Calcutta, minister Partha Chatterjee said the party will organise "gana abasthan (mass sit-in demonstration)" across the state for the next two days.