Hours before calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday had a meeting with his outspoken critic within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Subramanian Swamy, surprising many in the political circles.
Swamy, a member of the Rajya Sabha, did not switch over to the Trinamool Congress, which of late opened up its door to disgruntled politicians of other parties in its bid to expand beyond West Bengal. “I have already been with her (Banerjee),” he told journalists, as the Trinamool Congress chief welcomed him at the official residence of her nephew and the party’s general secretary Abhishek Banerjee in New Delhi. “I don’t need to,” he replied, when a journalist asked him if he would join the Trinamool Congress.
He later took to Twitter to laud the Chief Minister of West Bengal. “Of the all the politicians I have met or worked with, Mamata Banerjee ranks with JP (Jayaprakash Narayan), Morarji Desai, Rajiv Gandhi, Chandrashekhar, and P V Narasimha Rao who meant what they said and said what they meant. In Indian politics, that is a rare quality,” Swamy, who was dropped from the BJP’s national executive committee last month, tweeted.
His inclusion of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi among the politicians “who meant what they said and said what they meant” is also surprising as he has been a firebrand critic of the Nehru-Gandhis, the first family of the Congress.
Swamy has been openly criticising the Modi Government’s foreign and economic policies, particularly on issues like demonetisation and response to China’s aggression along the disputed boundary with India.
He met Banerjee a day after meeting her staunch critic and West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar at the Rajbhavan in Kolkata.
Dhankar had several rounds of war of words with the Trinamool Congress Government in West Bengal. He criticised Banerjee’s Government on Twitter for "failing" to curb political violence in West Bengal after the Trinamool Congress trounced the BJP in the assembly polls in the state earlier this year. The BJP had alleged that the political violence unleashed by the Trinamool Congress after winning the assembly polls in West Bengal had targeted the Hindus of the state.
Swamy, himself, has been vocal against alleged persecution of the Hindus. After he met Banerjee in New Delhi, several Twitter users raised the issue of “killing of Hindus in West Bengal” to question his decision to have a meeting with the Chief Minister of the state.
“Has Union Government no Home Minister to know this? Has he taken sanyas (retirement)?” he replied, apparently implying that it was the responsibility of Modi Government’s Home Minister Amit Shah to deal with the allegation of violence against the Hindus in West Bengal.
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