Rahul wants a tie-up with Mamata, says BJP

Kolkata The BJP on Friday claimed that Rahul Gandhi made it very clear on Thursday that he wanted to tie up with Mamata Banerjee and her party Trinamool Congress after the Lok Sabha election.

BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told a press conference here, "What Rahul Gandhi has said is he wants cooperation of Mamata after the election. The Congress is desperate to stop Modi, so they are ready to support Mamata."

"This means voting for Mamata is voting for the Congress and voting for Congress is voting for Mamata," he alleged.

Javadekar, however, said this would not impress people as "they are not fools" and they would be voting for a decisive change.

Asked if the Supreme Court order directing CBI to probe the Saradha scam would affect the Trinamool Congress' prospects in the last phase of elections to be held on May 12, Javadekar said, "TMC will have to fight for each and every seat. It will not get more than one or two seats."

He claimed that the BJP would score surprise results in eastern India and that it would go into double digits in Bengal this time.

The BJP at present has only the Darjeeling seat which it had won with the support of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and its best result was in 1999 when it secured two seats.

A four-member BJP team, led by Javadekar, met Sunil Gupta, the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal, and demanded that additional forces be deployed and steps taken to prevent rigging of elections.

"This we have done as there is a possibility that Trinamool Congress and Congress may resort to rigging in the last phase as they have done in the earlier phases.

"After 20 years of electoral reforms, for the first time there has been rigging in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh," Javadekar claimed.

"Therefore we went in a delegation and asked them to be more vigilant and deploy more forces, more cameras, more videography and more micro-observers and many other steps to ensure free and fair polls," the BJP leader said adding they have also given a list of sensitive booths to the CEO.

"The Trinamool is particularly disturbed and it is a do or die for them. So I asked the EC to be more cautious," he said about the election to 17 constituencies, of which 14 are held by the ruling Trinamool Congress.

He said BJP leaders would meet the Central Election Commission on Sunday in Delhi also in this regard.