Mamata Banerjee has destroyed Bengal: BJP

New Delhi- The BJP on Tuesday accused Trinamool Congress supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of “destroying” West Bengal. The party also likened the Left to a frying pan.

“If the Left (Front) was the frying pan, you are the fire. Mamata didi, you have burnt and destroyed Bengal,” Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Sambit Patra told reporters here.

The chief minister has so far only shed “crocodile tears” on the March 31 Vivekanand Road flyover collapse in Kolkata, the BJP leader said.

Patra said that a “syndicate” of Trinamool Congress workers and relatives of its leaders were involved in supplying “wrong material” for the flyover construction.

He cited the example of Rajat Bakshi, said to be the nephew of a Trinamool candidate and involved in the supply of material for the flyover project, in this regard.

Patra also accused the Trinamool Congress of extending favours to a “blacklisted company” in the flyover project and awarding it a major railway work in Jammu and Kashmir.

“Why was a blacklisted company awarded work costing more than Rs.761 crore?”

“Mamataji you have to answer… you and your party colleagues held the railways portfolio and given work to the same company that you called a blacklisted one on the day the flyover collapsed,” Patra said.

“You issued a tender to a blacklisted company to construct a tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir on October 19, 2011, just when you quit as the railways minister and the next incumbent was from your own party,” he alleged.

“There is a saying that what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow. But, because of its wrong administration, Bengal has only travelled from the frying pan to the fire,” the BJP spokesman said referring to a latest sting against a Trinamool leader and party candidate who allegedly admitted on camera about the presence of a syndicate.

The sting by a television channel, Patra claimed, “brings into the open the fact as to why the flyover collapsed”.

Referring to Bidhannagar mayor Sabyasachi Dutta’s alleged on-camera statement, the BJP leader said: “It is a matter of shame that he is boasting of (such) syndicates.”

“He (mayor) says there are syndicates in Bengal. Syndicates in Kolkata which supply materials to all contractors involved in construction,” Patra said, adding that the mayor also claimed that syndicate members are those “who vote for us (Trinamool Congress)”.

The BJP leader said Dutta claimed “we want the syndicate to be subdued before the administration” and that the number of syndicates was over 20,000.

“If this is (the case) in one constituency, look at the big nexus. When I say that Bengal has only travelled from the frying pan to the fire, I derive (my statement) from what mayor Sabyasachi says,” the BJP leader said.

The mayor mentions that all these (syndicates) came into being during the earlier Left Front rule.

Patra said: “If the syndicates came into being during the Left rule, why is Mamata Banerjee patronising, institutionalising and funding these?”

The BJP leader also questioned the TMC government for allegedly releasing Rs.115 crore to various sporting clubs in West Bengal. “Are these not syndicates?”

Image- File photo (IANS)