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Kolkata: On a Super Sunday buzzing with political rallies just before the first phase of voting in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and central investigative agencies, accusing them of a direct attempt on her life and a broader conspiracy to destabilise her government.

During a meeting in Tarakeshwar, a visibly incensed Mamata Banerjee reacted sharply to recent Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids, particularly targeting individuals close to her. “They are raiding the house of someone who takes care of my security. What do you intend?” she asked, her voice laced with outrage. “Do you want to win Bengal by killing me? If you want to try to win Bengal by killing me, don’t try.”

ED’s actions against Mamata’s security personnel

The Chief Minister specifically highlighted the ED’s actions against her security personnel and the individual managing her income tax affairs. “Who looks after my income tax work? The ED has searched his house,” she said, linking the raids to political intimidation. She also brought up the detention of TMC candidate Debashish Kumar for 16 hours, alleging it was a deliberate attempt to obstruct his election campaign.

Women’s Reservation Bill: Delimitation, not representation, is the fray

Beyond the immediate heat of the ED raids, Mamata Banerjee also took aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent comments on the Women’s Reservation Bill. Modi had yesterday criticised the opposition for complicating the issue, but Banerjee vehemently rejected the insinuation.

“It is very unfortunate that the Prime Minister has chosen to complicate this issue instead of resolving it honestly,” she said. “I want to make it clear that the Trinamool Congress has always been in favour of political representation for women.”

TMC in favour of political representation for women: Mamata

She highlighted TMC’s commitment, presenting statistics, “In the Lok Sabha, 37.9 per cent of our elected members are women. We have nominated 46 per cent women members in the Rajya Sabha. The question of opposing women’s reservation has never arisen.”

The Chief Minister clarified that TMC’s opposition was not to women’s reservation itself, but to the embedded delimitation clause. “The Modi government was conspiring to implement the Delimitation Bill by using women as shields to fulfil its personal political objectives. We opposed it,” she asserted.

BJP intends to exploit the Seat Reorganisation Bill, says Mamata

Banerjee further alleged that the BJP intends to exploit the Seat Reorganisation Bill, leveraging women as a “shield” to manipulate the political landscape and increase representation for BJP-ruled states, an agenda, she declared, that Trinamool would never allow.

Questioning the timing and intent behind the Bill’s passage, Mamata asked, “If this government’s intentions were good, then why wait for almost three years after the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed on September 28, 2023? When elections are going on in many states, why was it passed in a hurry? And why was delimitation added to it?”