BJP will be ousted from power at the Centre like CPI(M) in Bengal: Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the BJP will be ousted from power at the Centre like the CPI(M) was removed from the state. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government had only changed the names of historical places in the country, Banerjee, a strident critic of the saffron party, said.

"We are not afraid of the red eyes of Delhi. The BJP will be out of power at the Centre soon. We (TMC) drove away from the CPI(M) from Bengal, the BJP will be ousted from power at the Centre by people in the near future. This is is our pledge, our commitment," she said, speaking at a rally here in Paschim Midnapore district.

Banerjee, who is also the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo, has called a mega rally of opposition parties in Kolkata on January 19 next year as part of efforts to stop the BJP from coming back to power in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Slamming the saffron party's Hindutva agenda, she said, "I have great respect for the seers of the Ramakrishna Mission. But I do not respect those in the BJP, who only do drama in the name of Hindutva."

In an apparent reference to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's recent statement in poll-bound Rajasthan that Hanuman was a Dalit, Banerjee alleged that the BJP was insulting the Dalits. She, however, did not take any name.

The chief minister accused the BJP of converting institutions like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) into its party offices. "This has never happened before," she said.

Banerjee claimed that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) workers, who used to torment the people of the state during the previous Left Front rule, had now shifted to the BJP and were trying to mislead people.