Mamata pens Bengali poem to slam Modi govt’s decision to scrap banknotes

Mangalore Today News Network

Nov 12, 2016: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has penned a 32-line Bengali poem slamming the Centre’s decision to put Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes out of circulation .

In the poem posted on her Twitter handle Saturday morning, Banerjee hit out at an unnamed ruler – an apparent reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who announced the dramatic move Tuesday evening.

The Trinamool chief calls “the ruler” an autocrat and asked whether he is deaf to the agony of the workers who are suffering as a direct outcome of his decision.

“Be ready for a triple talaq from those who lost all following your decision,” she writes in the last two lines that appear to be a warning for the BJP ahead of crucial assembly polls next year.

Banerjee has been at the forefront of the criticism of the government’s move and was the first important leader to attack the Centre. While speaking to a crowd in Chandernagore in Hooghly district on Thursday, she alleged that the ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes was actually designed to deflect attention from BJP’s failure to recover ‘black money’ stashed abroad by Indians.

She went to the extent of saying that she was himself a victim as she did not have the cash to buy sweets to offer to the goddess -- Bengal was going through the four-day Jagadhatri pujas when the announcement was made -- and was compelled to borrow some to purchase it.

After the Trinamool Congress chief publicly criticised Modi’s decision on Thursday, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh, too, spoke out against it. But none took it to the poetic extent that the Trinamool chief has done.

Over the past few months Mamata Banerjee has criticised the ruling establishment at the Centre on a number of issues such as cow politics, ‘infringement on the federal structure of the country’, religious and political intolerance.

Banerjee is a published author and has composed earlier to express her views on the ruler’s atrocities (read Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government) in Singur and Nandigram.