West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday, 31 March, wrote to key Opposition leaders including Sonia Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray and Arvind Kejriwal, stating that “the time has come for a united and effective struggle against BJP's attacks on democracy and the Constitution”.
Beginning with the Centre’s controversial new law that gives more powers to Delhi's Lieutenant Governor than the elected government in the capital, Mamata spoke about seven instances of what she termed as the “series of assaults” by the BJP and its government at the Centre “on democracy and Constitutional Federalism in India”.
"What the BJP has done in Delhi is not an exception. It is increasingly becoming the rule," she wrote in the letter.
Among her seven instances were the Modi government’s “policy of reckless and wholesale privatisation of the nation’s assets”, the party’s “unlimited assets from questionable sources” allegedly used to topple non-BJP governments, "disbanding" of bodies like the National Development Council and the Planning Commission, withholding of funds to state governments not run by BJP and misuse of the office of the Governor as well as agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation.
“Overall, the Centre-state relations, and also relations between the ruling party at the Centre and Opposition parties, have never been as bad in the history of independent India as they are now, and the blame for this rests squarely with the prime minister’s authoritarian conduct.”Mamata Banerjee’s letter
“There is a clear pattern and purpose behind all these developments,” Mamata wrote in the letter, stating that as the chairperson of TMC, she would work wholeheartedly with all other like-minded parties in this battle to unite against the BJP.
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