'TMC govt won't last till 2026...': Bengal BJP chief's ominous prediction for Mamata after LS polls 2024

West Bengal BJP President Sukanta Majumdar said the TMC government will not complete its full term till 2026 if the saffron party gets even one more seat than the Mamata Banerjee-led party in the Lok Sabha elections. In the last elections, the BJP had bagged 18 of 42 seats, while the TMC had got 22. 

Majumdar said the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), whose rules were notified recently, will help the party sweep the elections in West Bengal. He said the people in the state have decided to defeat the "corrupt and anarchic" TMC in the Lok Sabha polls. 

"We have set a target of winning 35 seats from Bengal. We are confident about it. If we get even one more seat than that of the TMC, which we will get, the Mamata Banerjee government will not complete its full term till 2026. Its government would collapse," he said in an interview with PTI. 

Union Home Minister Amit Shah in April last year had set a target of winning 35 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state. However, in an interview recently, Shah said the BJP would win 25-plus seats. 

Majumdar said the BJP would not be responsible for the collapse, rather "dynasty politics" of the TMC would be the reason for it. "We were not the reason for the collapse of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government in Maharashtra; rather it was Uddhav Thackeray's love for his son and NCP chief Sharad Pawar's love for his daughter that was responsible for it. It was dynasty politics that led to the collapse." 

"In Bengal, too, it will be love for the nephew that will lead to its collapse. If you try to give something to a person not worthy of it, then everything ought to go haywire," he said in an apparent reference to TMC's national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of Mamata Banerjee. 

The BJP presently has 74 MLAs in the 294-member state assembly, out of which seven have switched over to the TMC but have not resigned from the legislature's post. The TMC has 217 MLAs.  

Speaking on the poll planks of Bengal BJP, he said corruption and incidents at Sandeshkhali will be the Achilles heels for the TMC. "The TMC is running one of the most corrupt governments in the state and with the revelations of Sandeshkhali, it is quite apparent the kind of tyranny that is going on in West Bengal. The people will vote against this misrule of the TMC," Majumdar said. 

Sandeshkhali, located on the fringes of the Sundarbans, has been engulfed in turmoil for over a month due to accusations against TMC leader Shajahan Sheikh and his associates for land grabs and sexual abuse.