New Delhi : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Tuesday said she was ready to resign if the allegations of her involvement in the Saradha chit fund scam were proved.
In an exclusive interview to Headlines Today, Banerjee claimed she had nothing to hide.
Asked whether she was close to the Saradha group, she replied: “Who said? First you have to prove, you have to show the evidence. You have to prove it, I will resign if you prove it.”
She said the chit fund scam had its origins in the Left Front government.
“It is (from the) CPI-M’s time, Left Front’s time, not our times. We arrested the man. We set up the judicial commission. We returned the money to five lakh individuals. This is absolutely wrong to blame us,” she said.
However, Banerjee said her party Trinamool Congress could join hands with the Left at the national level to protect secularism.
“This is like a common minimum programme. We can come together against communal forces to protect secularism,” Banerjee said, and made it clear that the alliance would only be at the national level and not in Bengal.
“Left is finished in Bengal. Their ideology is different. We are different,” she said.
The Trinamool chief added that the Congress needed to take the lead to form a secular alliance and join hands with regional forces to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
She also lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and without taking his name, accused him of indulging in “selfish politics”.
“I don’t believe in selfish politics. I believe if you want to do the good thing, people will give you the recognition,” she said, dismissing Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan as an “old programme”.
She also slammed the government’s plan to allow 100 percent FDI in certain key railway departments.
“You think this is reform? Railways are the lifeline of the country. In the name of quality, you are selling the country, why do you need outsiders?” she said.
The Bengal chief minister also accused the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of dividing the country on communal lines by playing up the Burdwan terror plot case.
“This is all BJP and RSS propaganda. They want to divide the country. My police arrested those involved in the plot, not NIA,” she said.
On reports that BJP president Amit Shah had made Bengal his next target ahead of the 2016 assembly election, Banerjee said: “Who is this Amit Shah? I don’t know this man.”