West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday wrote to all the non-BJP leaders across the country, calling for a “united and effective struggle against the BJP's attacks on democracy and the Constitution.” In a seven-point letter to leaders of major political parties in India, including MK Stalin, Jagan Mohan Reddy, Sonia Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Tejashwi Yadav, Uddhav Thackeray, Arvind Kejriwal, Naveen Patnaik among others, Mamata has expressed “serious concerns over a series of assaults by the BJP and its government at the Centre on democracy and constitutional federalism in India.”
Mamata has cited the recently passed National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill by the two Houses of Parliament, calling it a “direct attack” on the federal structure of the country. “It (the Act) also makes a mockery of the letter and spirit of democracy since it disempowers the people of the national capital. Furthermore, it violates the unambiguous verdict by a five-judge Supreme Court bench in 2018, which upheld the pre-eminence of Delhi's elected Government in all matters other than police, public order and land,” Mamata has written.
Mamata has written that in states governed by non-BJP parties, the “Centre has been creating problems for the duly elected governments by misusing the office of the Governor. In many States, including in West Bengal, Governors have been functioning like BJP's office bearers, and not as neutral Constitutional authorities,” she has said.
The West Bengal Chief Minister has also accused the BJP-ruled Union government of “brazenly and vindictively misusing the CBI, ED and other institutions” against leaders and functionaries of non-BJP parties for “its own partisan political ends.” She has added that the Union government is also “deliberately” withholding the transfer of funds to state governments, especially those ruled by non-BJP parties
“The BJP has amassed unlimited resources from questionable sources, which it is using to topple duly elected non-BJP governments and to engineer defections in non-BJP parties. The Modi Government's policy of reckless and wholesale privatisation of the nation's assets is also an attack on democracy, because these assets belong to the people of India,” Mamata has said
Mamata added that Centre-State relations and also relations between the BJP and opposition parties have never been as bad in the history of independent India as they are now, and that the blame for this “rests squarely with the Prime Minister's authoritarian conduct.”
“There is a clear pattern and purpose behind all these developments. The BJP wants to make it impossible for non-BJP parties to exercise their Constitutional rights and freedoms. It wants to dilute the powers of State Governments and downgrade them to mere municipalities. In short, it wants to establish a ONE-PARTY AUTHORITARIAN RULE in India,” Mamata has written. She has asked all the non-BJP political parties to deliberate on these issues and chart a plan of action after the conclusion of the ongoing Assembly elections.