TMC won't be able to loot votes in panchayat polls: Suvendu Adhikari

Ranaghat (WB): West Bengal Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari Friday said the ruling TMC will be trounced in the panchayat polls next year as BJP will counter its "vote loot machinery" in the state, including in Purba Medinipur.

Adhikari, who was speaking at a BJP rally at Ranaghat a week after TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee held a public meeting at the same venue, further accused the ruling party of "surpassing all records" by illegally appointing thousands of teachers and group D staff in schools.

The TMC countered Adhikari saying he was "peddling lies".

"I know how TMC had won the 2018 panchayat election by unleashing terror, how they forced more than half of the opposition candidates not to contest and looted votes by muscle power. Rest assured we (BJP) won't let that happen, we will counter the TMC vote loot machinery. We won't allow a rerun in 2023," Adhikari, who quit Mamata Banerjee's party ahead of the 2021 state election and joined the saffron party, claimed.

"The BJP will fight the TMC inch by inch in the rural polls everywhere, including Purba Medinipur," Adhikari, the Nandigram lawmaker, said.

He said 58,000 jobs had been given illegally to incompetent candidates and 53 primary teachers have ordered to be dismissed by the Calcutta High Court. The inefficient candidates were causing harm to the education system as they lacked the requisite qualification but were drawing salaries.

"All incompetent service holders in government schools who got jobs from this corrupt administration without qualifying, beware. The court monitored probe will take away your jobs and give it to the rightful ones," he added.

The saffron leader claimed that four lakh fake job cards were issued in the state and the figure will reach the 10 lakh figure by December 31.

Eleven lakh deserving candidates for Prime Minister Awas Yojana scheme are yet to get its benefits, he added.

Banerjee in his meeting at the place a week ago had said that any TMC worker found to be involved in corrupt activities in his panchayat area will be removed from the party and only people with clean images will get tickets for the coming rural poll. He had also directed the pradhan of a local panchayat to put in his papers for not ensuring development activities in his area.

Referring to Banerjee asking TMC functionaries in panchayats to pull up their socks, Adhikari, a Mamata Banerjee loyalist turned bete noire, said "This is nothing but drama, a gallery show before the panchayat poll to repair TMC's image in the eyes of the people. But this will not help him save the party from being routed." Reacting to Adhikari's comments, TMC state spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said the BJP leader has no credibility as he belonged to the party he is criticising till two years ago and had joined the saffron party to save himself from being hounded by CBI.

"Adhikari is peddling a pack of lies, all his figures are fudged. How can you take a person seriously who says the TMC run government will collapse in December? Now he is singing different tunes saying it will happen soon".

Adhikari has been repeatedly saying that TMC's downfall will begin in December. He had later said that it will happen soon. "Don't give much importance to such a turncoat politician," Ghosh added.