The election season is upon us and thus the blame game has started across the nation – with the united opposition’s major onus being targeting the central government and the duo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah in particular.
With Mamata Banerjee finally showing the true fascist colors of the ‘united opposition’ out in the open after ‘her’ Kolkata police manhandled a team CBI officers who went to question the city’s police commissioner Rajeev Kumar over no-show when summoned by the central agency.
Kumar is being investigated for tampering with evidence in the 2013 Saradha chit fund scam. The CBI claims that an SIT formed in April of the same year collected a laptop, five cell phones and documents, including a diary purportedly of Saradha Group promoter Sudipta Sen but the items have since gone missing.
“Crucial evidence was not handed over. It was either destroyed… We want to take the investigation further. We are looking into the larger conspiracy connected to the chit fund scams,” said Pankaj Srivastav, CBI Joint Director in Kolkata.
The West Bengal CM has since sat on a ‘Dharna’, much to delight of her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal. Several regional leaders, who were earlier seen sharing dais with Mamata at the grand “United India Rally” have shown solidarity with her in an attempt to undermine the CBI and thus blame the Modi govt of false ‘fascism’.
Earlier the Mamata govt. barred Amit Shah’s chopper from landing for a rally in the state and she later repeated the same autocratic behaviour when UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s chopper was set back.
The last year or so has seen the grand opposition put on some massive shows of strength, first in Karnataka at HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing in ceremony and then in Kolkata and more recently at the much-hyped but ultimately flop-show ‘Jan Akanksha Rally in Bihar. The opposition, though it seems focused and determine to oust the popular Modi government – is more or less a paper-Tiger (barring the SP-BSP coalition in UP) when it comes to having an actual impact on the ground.
Some 22-23 odd parties participated in the Kolkata rally organised by ‘poribartan ki pukar’ Mamata Di, but how many of them have a hold on the voter’s mind outside of their respective states is the key. Chandrababu Naidu will not pull crowds in the Hindi heartland, nor will DMK’s MK Stalin have any effect on votes being polled in Orissa, West Bengal or the North East.
Whereas, the poster-boy of Congress is yet to charm the united opposition into accepting him as a leader – as was evident when soon after Stalin poised his name as the leader of the ‘United Front’ with Samajwadi Party, the Telugu Desam Party, Trinamool Congress, the National Conference, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the CPM having hinted at being against the dynast’s leadership.
The disgruntled opposition will give the anti-incumbent ‘Modi Sarkar’ a challenge, but the PM still enjoys massive popularity amongst masses as the Modi wave is far from over just yet.
