Kolkata: At a time when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee stepped up fight against the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre, Trinamool Congress(TMCF) Rajya Sabha MP Jawhar Sircar put the party in a spot saying that that the TMC would not be able to put up a strong fight against the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) while having rotten elements within its fold.
The MP also said that his family and friends even asked him to quit politics after TMC leaders Partha Chatterjee and Anubrata Mondal were arrested. "You can't put up a fight against the BJP in 2024 with rotten elements in the party. A portion of the party is completely rotten. These rotten elements have to be removed, or else it will infect the entire body," Sircar told a news channel on Monday.
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The bureaucrat turned politician said that it was a major embarrassment for him when he was asked to comment on the hoards of cash recovered at the apartment of Arpita Mukherjee, an associate of Chatterjee. Sircar said that he had never encountered such a situation even when he was an IAS officer.
Terming it as embarrassing, Sircar said: “It is seen on TV that a minister is adorning his girlfriend by looting people’s money. One side of Trinamool has rotted. It will be difficult to fight the 2024 Lok Sabha polls with this rotten body,” he said.
Recalling how he joined politics to defeat the BJP, Jawhar Sircar said "if even after 10 years (since the 2014 Lok Sabha) we fail to defeat the BJP in 2024, then there might not be any other Lok Sabha election in the country afterwards."
His comments come at a time when TMC Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee has made it clear that ousting the BJP from power at the Centre is her top priority and her "last fight."
