A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s big rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee chose International Women’s Day to strongly criticise him for his allegation that women are not safe under Didi’s rule.
Though the main theme of her second Padyatra (Foot march) in as many number of days–this time in Kolkata—was again to highlight the rise in fuel price, she made it a point to counter all the charges levelled by Modi a day earlier.
Talking about the empowerment of women in her state she said that with 41 per cent representation, the Trinamool Congress has the highest presence of women MPs in Lok Sabha. In contrast she tried to highlight the deplorable plight of women in the BJP-ruled states.
There are in all nine women MPs of TMC out of total 22. This stands at about 41 per cent. In fact, it gave tickets to 17 women out of 42 in the last Lok Sabha election, which too come around 41 per cent.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha poll 11 women won on TMC ticket. The total number of victorious candidates was 34. Thus about 32.5 per cent of TMC MPs were women between 2014 and 2019.
With such a sizeable presence of women, Mamata is quite hopeful that they would surely support her. The TMC had given ticket to 50 women in the 291 constituencies this time.
Besides leading a Padyatra, which again had a huge presence of women, Mamata made a direct attack on Modi and wondered that one day he would even name the country after Narendra Modi. She was referring to the naming of a stadium after the Prime Minister in Ahmedabad. She even lambasted the Modi government for its utter failure in checking the rising price of fuel.
