Modi on 2-day visit to Bengal amid raging SIR, ED raid rows
Kolkata: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit West Bengal on Saturday and Sunday for back-to-back engagements, during which he will address political rallies and attend government programmes amidst a political slugfest over the SIR of electoral rolls and the recent ED raids on the TMC's political consultancy firm I-PAC. The prime minister is scheduled to address a rally in minority-dominated Malda on January 17 and another at Singur, the area where Tata's small car Nano plant was supposed to come up before it pulled out in 2008 following protests by TMC, in Hooghly district on January 18.
Both locations carry strong electoral and political symbolism ahead of the assembly elections. This will be Modi's second visit to the state amid the ongoing SIR exercise and his first since the political firestorm triggered by the ED's searches at I-PAC offices on January 8, during which CM Mamata Banerjee had stormed the raid site and had accused the agency of attempting to steal the TMC's election strategy at the BJP's behest.
"The PM will arrive in Malda on Saturday afternoon. He will first attend a government programme and then address a public rally at a nearby ground. On Sunday, he will again come to Bengal, this time to Singur in Hooghly, where he will attend a government programme followed by a public rally," a senior state BJP leader said. The BJP leader, however, could not confirm whether the PM would have a night halt in Kolkata. The visit comes against the backdrop of a bitter dispute over the SIR process, with the ruling TMC accusing the BJP and the Election Commission of harassing ordinary citizens through the revision exercise, claiming voters would respond to this "harassment" at the ballot box. On January 18, the PM will visit Singur in Hooghly district, where he will inaugurate, lay foundation stones and flag off development projects worth around Rs 830 crore. Politically, Singur occupies a singular place in Bengal's contemporary history. Nearly two decades after it became the epicentre of the industry-versus-land agitation that reshaped the state's power map, the area is again at the centre of a high-stakes narrative ahead of the polls. galuru.
