West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Monday accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government of not acting on information that could have prevented the deaths of security personnel in the Pulwama attack. Forty Central Reserve Police Force jawans had lost their lives in the attack in Jammu and Kashmir on February 14, which was claimed by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.
The Trinamool Congress chief claimed the Centre was “playing politics over the dead bodies of jawans” instead. She made the accusations at her party’s extended core committee meeting in Kolkata.
Banerjee claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government wanted to create war hysteria and help it score votes in the Lok Sabha polls. “The central government was aware that such an attack can take place, there were intelligence inputs,” Banerjee alleged. “Then why didn’t the government take action to protect our jawans. The government allowed them to die.”
She alleged that Union ministers were not being taken into confidence during the decision-making process. “This government is being run by two brothers [Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah] who have blood of innocents on their hands,” she said. “Our party workers and cadre should be cautious as efforts are on to tamper electronic voting machines during the Lok Sabha polls. You all have to thwart those efforts.”
The chief minister also claimed that the Trinamool Congress will win all the 42 seats in the Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal.
Banerjee and the BJP have been at odds over several matters in the recent past, including since January, when her state police allegedly refused to cooperate with the Central Bureau of Investigation in a case and had detained the CBI officers instead.
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