Mamata offers to quit but claims "CM's chair needs me"

With the BJP eyeing the Mamata Banerjee citadel after making inroads into West Bengal in the 2019 general elections, Chief Minister Mamata took everyone by surprise by offering to quit the chief minister’s chair.

Addressing her first press conference since her Trinamool Congress (TMC) party suffered a massive setback in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, she said that she had told her party of her unwillingness to continue as the chief minister of the state. “I don’t care about the (CM’s) chair. I don’t need the chair, it needs me. I would like to continue as the party president.” However, the party has rejected her offer to step down.

She also asserted that she had kept the party’s promises as mentioned in the manifesto and that she would like to work for the party.

In the recently concluded general elections, the TMC won 22 of the total 42 seats in the state while the BJP won 18, a significant increase since the 2014 polls, when the saffron party had secured just 2 seats.

Mamata continued her attack on the Election Commission, casting doubts on the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs), by accusing the poll panel of open bias towards the BJP. “The Election Commission was the man of the match this time,” she said. Further, she alleged that in the past six months, she was not allowed to work. “I felt insulted. The elections were conducted in an emergency-like situation,” she said.

She also wondered how one alliance can win all the seats in six-seven states and the opposition could not win even a single one. The TMC supremo alluded to the role of foreign power in the elections, but refused to elaborate further.

She also hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party for communal polarisation of voters and said, “I’m against any kind of religious extremism.” Mamata further alleged that the saffron party had given “a lot of money to the CPI(M) and a few in the TMC too.”

On alleged reports of horse trading in the state ahead of the Assembly elections in 2021, the TMC supremo said, “Let them buy (the MLAs). They are trying to do the same everywhere, like Karnataka. Do you think it is an auspicious thing to do for a political party?” She also asserted that the TMC will win more votes in the 2021 polls.