Mamata Banerjee says Trinamool will help form next government, vows to oust BJP

West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee said on Wednesday that the coming Lok Sabha election would remove the BJP from power and make sure Narendra Modi never became prime minister again. She was speaking at an election rally at Chopra in Uttar Dinajpur.

Her message to voters

Banerjee claimed that the Trinamool Congress would help form the next government at the Centre and urged people to vote for her party. Describing the contest as a crucial one, she said its purpose was to defeat the BJP and ensure that it did not come back.

Attack on the prime minister

She accused Modi of spending four and a half years travelling abroad and said he had only suddenly become concerned about the welfare of citizens. “Five years back he was the chaiwala and now he is all of a sudden the chowkidar,” she said, adding that people would not find him anywhere after the election.

Banerjee alleged that there was no work, that farmers had died unable to repay their debts and that the prime minister had stayed silent when people were lynched. She also used the words “dangabaaz” (rioter) for Modi.

The Darjeeling contest

Banerjee said that no leader from the BJP, the Congress or the CPI(M) had visited Darjeeling in the past five years, while she had made a point of going to the Hills regularly.

The Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat was set for a closely fought contest between the two rival factions of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, one led by its chief Bimal Gurung and the other by his former protégé Binay Tamang. The Trinamool Congress, which rules West Bengal, has never won Darjeeling since the party was founded in 1998, while the BJP has taken it twice.

What happened next

The BJP won 303 of 543 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, and Narendra Modi was sworn in for a second term on 30 May 2019.

Originally published on 10 April 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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