Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Saugata Roy on Monday stated that the party's decision to choose Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the Panchayat Poll campaign has nothing to do with the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) strength in the state.
"Mamata Banerjee is a committed party person. The party felt that Mamata Banerjee should address some meetings of the panchayat elections, so she started campaigning for the party. It is nothing to do with BJP's strength in West Bengal," said TMC MP Saugata Roy.
The TMC's decision to send the party's head for the Panchayat Polls campaigning has been widely questioned since West Bengal's Chief Minister has not led rallies for such local elections in over a decade.
Earlier on Sunday, hitting out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for campaigning in the Panchayat polls, BJP state unit chief Sukanta Majumdar said that it "shows how strong the BJP has become."
"These people [Trinamool Congress] were saying after May 2, 2021, [State Assembly election results] that the BJP has gone. But today a leader like Mamta Banerjee has to return to the ground after 12 years for the Panchayat elections, this shows how strong the BJP has become," Mr Majumdar told ANI on Sunday.
On Monday, Trinamool Congress supremo Banerjee started her party's campaign from North Bengal's Cooch Behar.
"Mamata Banerjee is returning to the ground to campaign for the panchayat polls. This is a great achievement for us. Now she is thinking that her opposition has become so powerful that she herself has to return to the ground and that too from North Bengal," he said, adding that the West Bengal Chief Minister's destruction will start from North Bengal itself.
BJP state unit president further noted that during the Chief Minister's poll campaign, the goons, nurtured by TMC will do more violence to intimidate the BJP. "But we will not be afraid and will give a befitting reply to TMC," he told ANI.
Majumdar said that soon TMC will collapse like a house of cards.
The panchayat election will be held in a single phase on July 8, with the counting of votes scheduled for July 11.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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