Gathering under 10 lakh, nearly half left before Mamata's speech: Police official reveals real crowd size
It's believed a lot of individuals couldn’t reach the area and watched on big screens in Dharamtala, Shyam Bazar and Tea Board.
Although a lot of hype had been created for several weeks over the turnout at the United India rally at Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, the final crowd count failed to impress political pundits. Veteran political watchers said that although the turnout was impressive it was not as ‘historic’ as TMC wanted.
Also read: Why Mamata Banerjee's United India rally is unlikely to unite the Opposition
“The way it was being projected we were thinking that even the lanes adjoining the ground would be chocked but nothing of that sort happened. The gathering was under 10 lakh and nowhere near the 50-lakh mark which was projected. The capacity of Brigade Parade Ground is 3.5 lakh and it was surely full,” said a senior police official preferring anonymity.
Zee 24 Ghanta has reported quoting sources that the PMO had asked for total count of the rally.
It's believed a lot of individuals couldn’t reach the area and watched on big screens in Dharamtala, Shyam Bazar and Tea Board.
The Kolkata Police said that the total count including those watching on separate screens was approximately nine lakh.
Members of the audience had started leaving the ground mid-way in such big numbers that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had to intervene asking them to stay back. “No vehicles will leave before 4 pm. You people sit down and listen to all the leaders. Let them know how disciplined you are,” Mamata said.
Again, as Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy was speaking, people, most from remote districts felt disconnected after hearing English and started leaving. Mamata, who was anchoring the event said, “There are 6-7 more speakers and then I will be speaking at the end.”
People who were leaving said they could not understand anything. “Some of the leaders are speaking in English which we have no clue about. Some are speaking in Tamil which is being translated in a strange way and there are some leaders who are speaking in Hindi but owing to age they are incomprehensible,” said Ramesh Kundu who had come from South 24 Parganas district and thought it would be profitable if he went to the bus and reserved a seat for himself.
While Mamata’s speech was still on, nearly half of the ground had left the venue.
The West Bengal CPI(M) Saturday criticised the Trinamool Congress for allegedly "destroying democracy and institutions" in the state and boasting of fighting against the misrule of the BJP at Centre.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretary and politburo member Surya Kanta Mishra said, the TMC and BJP were two sides of the same coin and share several "undemocratic traits".
"The TMC should not talk about restoring democracy in the country. They (TMC) themselves have destroyed democracy in the state and have subverted every institution in the state since it came to power in 2011," Mishra said.
"The way they conducted the last panchayat polls is a blot on democracy," he added.
What the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has been doing at the Centre since 2014, the TMC has been doing the same in West Bengal since 2011, she said further.
The TMC as a political party has neither any respect for democracy not for the constitutional norms, she added.
Issuing a war cry 'Delhi mein sarkar badal do' (change the government at the Centre), Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee Saturday asserted that the "expiry date" of the Narendra Modi government was over and a united opposition will win in the coming general elections.
Setting the tone for the Lok Sabha polls, leaders of 22 opposition parties came together at a mega rally here and declared to unitedly fight to oust the Modi government which had passed its "expiry date".
The CPI(M)-led Left Front which too was invited for the opposition rally decided to give it a miss.