Road ahead not so easy for BJP, Narendra Modi: Mamata Banerjee

Dismissing any possibility of the BJP coming to power and Narendra Modi taking over as the prime minister, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee Tuesday said the battle "would not be that easy" for the party as it lacked a base in many states.

"Some are saying Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is coming to power. Even before the elections some are chanting NaMo, NaMo (the abbreviated form of BJP'S prime ministerial candidate Modi), as if the prime ministerial candidate is going to become the prime minister. I don't agree. Our understanding of national politics is no less than others.

"The battle is not that easy," Banerjee said, addressing a Trinamool workers' meeting at Pailan in South 24 Parganas district.

The BJP hardly had strength in many states like West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Tamil Nadu, she said, claiming that neither the Congress nor the BJP, but the Federal Front would run the government at the centre after the coming general elections.

Banerjee, the West Bengal chief minister accused the Congress, the BJP and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) of forming a syndicate, and asserted her Trinamool was fighting alone against all of them and would finish as the third largest party.

"We will also emerge as a national party after the Lok Sabha polls. We need some more time to do better. We lack monetary strength. But I am telling you, if we get six months time we will make Trinamool the number one party in India," she said.

Banerjee said the Trinamool was opposed to the "destructive politics" of the CPI-M, the "communal politics" of the BJP and the "corruption and anti-people policies of the Congress".

"We have to defeat all three".

She attacked the Third Front being floated by the Left and some other parties, saying "from our experience we have seen they do no good".

Without taking its name, Banerjee assailed the BJP - which has bagged the support of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha for the Darjeelling, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar Lok Sabha constituencies - alleging it was trying to "divide Bengal". The GJM has been rooting for the creation of a separate state of Gorkhaland out of Darjeeling and parts of Jalpaiguri district in northern West Bengal.

In an oblique criticism of BJP's Darjeeling candidate Surinder Singh Ahluwalia, she said: "Some come from Delhi bag and baggage, and go back bag and baggage after the elections."

Without naming social activist Anna Hazare, with whom her bonhomie seems to have come to an end, she ridiculed his statement that he had only backed Banerjee and not the Trinamool.

"Some say Mamata is good, and not Trinamool. I say Mamata would have become bad, had Trinamool been so."