'Don't dare to topple': Mamata Banerjee days after Amit Shah says 'TMC will disintegrate'

Days after Home Minister Amit Shah said the TMC would disintegrate if the BJP won 30 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the saffron party should not dare try to topple her government in the state. She said the BJP's aspiration to overthrow the democratically elected TMC government after the Lok Sabha polls will remain unfulfilled. 

"BJP should not dare try to topple a democratically elected government. Its ambitions for success in the Lok Sabha polls will be shattered, as the people's verdict will be with the TMC," she said while addressing an election rally in Jadavpur.

Banerjee said that the BJP's speculation that the days of the TMC government were numbered after the Lok Sabha polls were akin to issuing a veiled threat but such ambitions will not materialise. 

"My analysis of the last six phases is that the BJP will not cross the 200-seat mark, while the INDIA bloc will come to power in Delhi, in which West Bengal and TMC will play a pivotal part," Banerjee said. She also claimed that the TMC is solely confronting the BJP in Bengal, accusing Congress and CPI (M) of clandestinely aligning with the saffron party. 

Home Minister Amit Shah last Wednesday said the BJP would win 30 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal. Once that happens, he said, the TMC will disintegrate and the exit of the Banerjee government will be certain. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the saffron party won 18 of 42 seats, while the TMC bagged 22. This time, the BJP is hoping to win 25-plus seats. 

Political strategist Prashant Kishor recently predicted that BJP's vote share and seats will increase in West Bengal, Telangana, and Odisha. 

In Jadavpur, the chief minister also alleged that Modi was plotting to drive a wedge between Muslims and SCs, STs and OBCs as manifested in the conspiracy to scrap the OBC certificates issued since 2010 and take away certain benefits under the OBC Bill passed in 2012. "We respect the judiciary but we will move the higher court against the Calcutta High Court order after summer vacation," she said. 

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday struck down as illegal the OBC status of several classes in West Bengal granted since 2010, sparking a political debate in the middle of the Lok Sabha elections. The court observed that the inclusion of 77 classes of Muslims in the list of backward categories was to "treat them as a vote bank". 

Banerjee claimed that the BJP does not understand the psyche and heritage of Bengal and its people, citing a few instances. She questioned Modi's persistent focus on Bengal in his rallies outside the state, suggesting an obsession. "Modiji had even said that TMC was planning to make Abhishek Banerjee the PM one day. What a far-fetched and incredible theory by the BJP about someone who joined politics only a few years back but certainly made his mark as a politician. He (Abhishek) was astounded by Modi's fertile imagination," she said.