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| Mamata defends position against CPI(M) onslaught |
| Rajat Roy / Kolkata May 11, 2009, 00:42 IST |
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If one goes by the campaign tone of the Left in West Bengal, then it would leave no one in doubt that their guns are trained on one single lady: Mamata Banerjee.
The CPI(M )general secretary Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, politburo member Brinda Karat, chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya, state party secretary Biman Bose and many other leaders have been campaigning in Kolkata South constituency-that is in her constituency- and each one of them is coming out with a series of charges against Mamata.
The party has lined up its massive organizational strength in that constituency and one could see from the high pitch campaign that they are not leaving any stone unturned to make the fight as close as possible. The CPI(M) candidate against Mamata is a relatively low profile person: Rabin Deb. But he enjoys the confidence of the party leadership and getting full support of the party machinery.
As a CPI(M) insider puts it, the party’s strategy is to keep Mamata engaged as much as possible in her constituency and weat for every single vote there.
Now, the party senior leaders have joined the campaign and started gunning for her. Yesterday Prakash Karat, while campaigning against Mamata at her Kolkata South constituency appealed to the voters saying that people should not vote in her favor as she might be going back to NDA alliance soon. Mamata Banerjee today made it very clear that she won’t be any part of the NDA after poll. Refuting a charge leveled against her that she might rejoin the NDA after the poll, Mamata said “I am not going with either BJP or NDA.”
Yesterday it was Karat, and today on the last Sunday before poll two left chief ministers Buddhadev Bhattacharya and Manik Sarkar were busy campaigning in Kolkata South. Buddhdev Bhattacharya tried to play up the Nano pull out issue. He claimed that Nano car would be manufactured in Singur in future. The CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose accused Mamata of not having any serious interest in attending the parliament session.
Citing records from the Lok Sabha secretariat Biman said that in the last five years Mamata did attend only 56 out of around 400 days of parliament session. Mamata retorted back by saying that all these days she was busy fighting the Left government and ruling CPI(M) in Singur and Nandigram. On the question of Nano car project she tried to clear any apprehension about her attitude towards industrialization. Aware that Buddhadev Bhattacharya has been trying to brand her as ‘anti-industry’, Mamata said, “I am not against industry.
Only thing I am interested in is that both agriculture and industry should be allowed to flourish simultaneously. One should not grow at the cost of other..” She made it amply clear that she and her party would oppose any bid to forcible acquisition of farm land for the sake of industry.
But despite all these aggressive posturing she was a bit uneasy explaining the absence of Rahul and Sonia Gandhi in Bengal’s last round of election campaign.
The recent remarks made by Rahul made it complicated for the Congress and TMC alliance to bring them to hold joint rally with Mamata in Kolkata as scheduled earlier. Her explanation was a bit evasive, “I have shared dais with Sonia Gandhi in Murshidabad earlier. May be security reasons have something to do with that, I don’t know.”
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