Panaji : Trinmool Congress Leader Derek O’Brien has urged the Congress to work with TMC. Their unity can defeat BJP in Goa Assembly Elections.
“The mindset has to change – we are equal partners in the opposition. Let’s work together on this, rather than talk down to us. There is no need to fight. Our single goal is to defeat the BJP,” O’Brien said in a statement.
This appeal from TMC leader comes after leaders of the two parties have been involved in a war of words after the TMC said it cannot wait indefinitely for the Congress to bring the opposition parties together against the BJP. The Congress has also questioned the TMC’s intention of fighting the Goa election due next year.
Congress leader Randeep Surjewala raised question on TMC and asked, whether the TMC was strengthening the BJP by planning to contest the Goa polls.
TMC leader Sukhendu Sekhar Ray cited TMC chief Mamata Banerjee’s meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and added they waited for six months, but there was no response or initiative. He added that is why they have moved on and decided to expand their base.
The row escalated on Monday when the TMC called the Congress leadership the “biggest insurance” of the BJP.
In a 4-0 clean sweep in bypolls in Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress snatched two seats from the BJP on Tuesday, steamrolling the party for the second time this year in the state. The Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien, in an interview to NDTV, said the big message is that “beyond Bengal, the BJP is beatable”. He also had a sharp message for the Congress, asserting that the “time is gone where a 23-year-old (Trinamool) is told by a 100-year-old grandmamma and grandpapa what to do”.
“The BJP has to be defeated… The mindset has to change… that we are equal partners in the opposition. Just because we are 22 or 23-year-old TMC (Trinamool Congress) and somebody else is 100-year-old… Grandmamma and granddaddy cannot tell a 22-year-old energetic party, ready to take on (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and (Amit) Shah… we are youthful and energetic and we want to take the BJP on. Let’s work on this, rather than talk down on us,” Derek O’Brien told NDTV, without naming the Congress.
“We have the passion, the energy to take the BJP on. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool has been doing this consistently…”
He pointed out that in the Bengal election earlier this year, the Trinamool fought 294 seats and the Congress and CPM together fought on their own and “got zero seats”.
According to the results of the bypolls held on October 30, the Trinamool wrested two assembly seats from the BJP- Dinhata and Santipur- by huge margins and retained the Khardah and Gosaba assembly seats.
The BJP’s candidates lost their deposits in three constituencies.
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