Kolkata, Oct 15: Mamata Banerjee has given the Congress-led UPA government "between two and six months" and wants the Trinamool Congress to become the nucleus of an anti-Congress front which, she thinks, will decimate the Grand Old Party in the next general elections.
The Bengal chief minister, in an interview with Ei Samay, the new Bengali daily from The Times of India stable, made it clear that nothing — not even the "needless tension" over the fate of the railway projects in the state — would force her off the route of strident anti-Congressism that she has charted out for herself. Instead, she would strive to raise the pitch higher to install a non-Congress, non-BJP government at the Centre, Banerjee said in her first exclusive conversation with a newspaper in recent times.
"Take it from me: if I understand even a little of politics, the Manmohan Singh government is not going to last more than six months," she said during the chat, when she played superwoman, responsible politician, a victim of circumstances but, most importantly, a David from one state taking on the might of a Goliath (the Centre).
Banerjee's answers, whenever the conversation turned to the Congress, took on that pitch of stridency and revealed how far she had travelled from the party with which she shared resources to demolish the apparently-invincible Left Front in Bengal. One invective that she reserved for the Congress was "pocha shamuk". Literal translation would mean "rotten snails"; in the context, it would imply something that is decaying and yet dangerous. "Does anyone keep pocha shamuk? You'd only hurt yourself," she said.
