Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha on Sunday said the BJP was like the river Ganga and urged the Left leaders to join it to get rid of their “sins”.
“Today I want to appeal to those who still believe in the ideology of Stalin and Lenin to join the BJP because it is like the river Ganga. All your sins will vanish if you take a holy dip in the Ganga,” Saha said in Karaban at a rally, organised as part of the BJP’s Jan Biswas Yatra.
Home Minister Amit Shah launched the yatra on Thursday as part of the BJP’s preparation for the Assembly elections slated for next month.
The BJP is gearing up to contest the elections with its regional ally, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), while the Opposition CPI(M) has issued a call for unity to deny the saffron party its second term in a row.
However, the Trinamool Congress is also planning to contest on its own to wrest power from the BJP. At present, the CPI(M) is BJP’s strongest opponent.
Slamming the Communist parties, Saha said the CPI(M) had deprived people of their democratic rights and created an atmosphere of violence and fear during their years in power.
“They ruled for 25 years in Tripura, but in 2018, people showed their faith in us (BJP) and enabled us to remove them from power. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has established good governance and has been working without allowing any corruption in any department since 2014. In Tripura also, we have been trying to do the same since 2018. Modiji is running the double-engine train towards the path of development,” Saha said.
“The compartments of the train are still vacant. Sit in the vacant bogies and Modiji will take all of us to the destination where we are supposed to be,” he added.