Mamata's flight hovers in sky, TMC claims conspiracy to kill Bengal CM for protesting against demonetization

A private airline plane carrying West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee hovered for over half an hour in the Kolkata sky before landing at the NSCBI Airport here on Wednesday night, prompting Trinamool Congress to allege that it was a conspiracy to eliminate the party supremo.

"The flight took off from Patna at 7.35 PM, an hour behind schedule, and landed here at shortly before 9 PM, after hovering over 30 minutes in the sky due to technical reasons," airport officials said, adding that such incident was nothing new in any airport. Senior Trinamool Congress leader and state Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim, who was accompanying Banerjee in the flight, however, took strong exception to "delayed permission from the ATC" for the flight to land and alleged that it was a conspiracy to eliminate the CM.

Hakim claimed that even as the pilot announced 180 km away from Kolkata that the plane would land within five minutes, it ultimately touched down after over half an hour, "seriously inconveniencing the chief minister and other passengers". "The pilot sought permission for landing from the ATC as the plane was flying short on fuel but the ATC kept the flight on hold," he alleged. "This is nothing but a conspiracy to kill our chief minister as she has raised voice against demonetization and is touring the country to organise a mass movement against the anti-people decision," Hakim said.

When contacted, a senior ATC official said he was not aware of such incident. 

Mamata terms demonetization decision as 'super Emergency'

Stepping up her attack on the Centre over demonetization, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today dubbed the drive as "super Emergency" and vowed to agitate against it till a rollback of the decision.

"The government has taken away the freedom from the people that they have been enjoying for the past 69 years. The government has snatched 'Roti, Kapda aur Makan' from the people... A people's movement was started during the Emergency days... Today, the situation is even worse than Emergency, it can be termed as super Emergency," the Trinamool Congress supremo said.
"People are facing difficulties and inconveniences.

They (NDA Government) have sold the country. It is the duty of political parties to raise their voice for the people and we will continue with our agitation till the government takes a decision to roll back the demonetization move," she said. Mamata was addressing a gathering here in the course of her party's nationwide campaign against demonetization. Raising the the issue of funding of PM Modi's public meetings in foreign countries, she asked "From where do they get money to hold such mega public meetings in foreign countries like the US?".

She also raised issue of registration of land by BJP in Bihar for opening offices in districts and displaying deed numbers of land purchased by the BJP, questioned the PM's intentions as to how could BJP buy huge chunks of land in the month of September, a few weeks before the announcement of demonetization on November 8. Without naming anyone, Banerjee said, "If someone comes with us, then it is good. But, it certainly pains us if someone is not with us in the struggle for common people. This is people's cause. People will not forgive 'gaddars' (betrayers)."

Mamata, who arrived in the state capital yesterday, also met RJD chief Lalu Prasad at the latter's residence. The ruling JD(U) has already made it clear that it would not be present at Banerjee's agitation programme in the light of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's support to demonetization. 

Questioning Modi's poll promise of depositing Rs 15 lakh to every individual's bank account from money stashed away illegally, Banerjee said, "What happened to the promise? Not a single paise came to anyone's account nor any single paise was brought from the Swiss bank." Lalu Prasad and his RJD have also been from time and again questioning the fate of this promise.

"Entire industry sector and economy are witnessing a slowdown due to demonetization as a result of which people, mostly from Bihar who have migrated everywhere in search of jobs, are not getting their payments, especially in the jute industry and tea gardens in Bengal," Banerjee said. Displaying two new notes of Rs 500 denomination having some dissimilar features, she alleged it smacked of a "big scam".

"The prime minister painted everyone as having black money, even those who file IT returns and pay taxes," she said adding "The PM also disrespected the 'stree shakti' (women power) and 'stree-dhan' (women wealth)." In order to buttress her point that majority of people still rely on cash transactions in the absence of banking facilities, the TMC chief gave figures of availability of bank branches saying, of the 8,400 gram panchayats in Bihar, 5,000 panchayats do not have branches of any bank.

After the programme was over and Mamata left the venue, senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh told reporters, "Nitish Kumar should not have supported the Centre's decision of demonetization. It creates doubt among the people whether everything was fine in the grand secular alliance." "There is no unanimity in the JD(U) itself on demonetization as Sharad Yadav, former JD(U) president, is saying something different while Nitish is supporting demonetization," he said.

Singh and party state unit chief Ramchandra Purbe, a few leaders of the Bihar unit of Samajwadi Party and Jan Adikar Party of Pappu Yadav along with TMC's senior leader Mukul Roy were present on the dais.