KOLKATA: Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee used the Martyrs’ Day rally on Saturday as a launch pad for cobbling together the “Federal Front, which would boot BJP out of office”. She invited leaders of the ‘Federal Front’ for a rally in Kolkata in January and said this event at Brigade Ground would sound the “death knell of the Narendra Modi government”.

Shifting gears from regional to national and putting herself at the centrestage, Mamata said: “Start working for the Brigade rally from November. Leaders of the Federal Front will come down to Kolkata on January 19 for Bengal to lead the country.”

Though she specifically mentioned “Federal Front” at the Martyrs’ Day rally, party insiders later said UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi , too, could be invited for the January rally. Referring to Modi’s rally in Midnapore last week where a tent collapsed on BJP workers, she said, “They cannot erect a proper pandal and they want to run the country,” she said.

Ex-BJP MP Chandan Mitra joins TMC: Former Rajya Sabha member of BJP, Chandan Mitra joined Trinamool Congress on Saturday. He had resigned from BJP on July 18.

