Mamata Not To Leave Congress

West Bengal Youth Congress president, Mamata Banerjee, who created a stir in the party by staying away from the PCC organisational elections for alleged irregularity in the poll process, yesterday ruled out any possibility of her leaving the Congress.

We will fight from within the Congress, Banerjee told newsmen here, flanked by her close associates, including Sudip Bandopadhyay, Pankaj Banerjee and Sobhandev Chattopadhyay (all MLAs). However, her one-time confidantes Saugata Roy and Sadhan Pande were conspicuous by their absence.

Resenting that AICC president Sitaram Kesri did not reply to her appeal to look into gross violation of the organisational poll schedule by the PCC leadership even after the announcement by the AICC, Banerjee alleged that her boycott of the polls was prompted by the fact that the entire election process had been rendered irrelevant due to sheer non-observance of mandatory provision enshrined in the constitution of the Congress.

She said the organisational elections in the Congress were being held on the instructions of the election commission which stipulated holding of the polls in a democratic way and in proper manner.

But, unfortunately this was not being pursued in its true spirit by the state PCC. According to Pankaj Banerjee, a meeting would be organised here on May 29 with the grassroot level Congress workers who were deprived of their voting rights.

The meeting, he said, would decide on the future course of action to be taken by the Mamata faction. I intimated to Kesri in my letter, dated May 14, that the the entire election procedure in state Congress had been totally wrong, she said stating that her pleas had not been entertained so far by the AICC president.

We (Youth Congress) wanted that grassroot-level workers be given priority and that the booth-level and block-level polls be held as per the AICC-notified schedule. Her allegations that the PCC leadership did not bother to publish the lists were corroborated by the three other party MLAs present. They said, we urged the PCC president, Somen Mitra, to bring out the lists, but he refused to oblige and rather asked us to come to the PCC office to see the same.

Seemingly perturbed at the turn-around by p r dasmunshi and subrata mukherjee over her stand on the organisational elections, banerjee said, we dont regret if anyone has deserted us. She said that the may-29 meeting, called by her for the grass-root-level party workers, would go a long way in deciding her future course of action. we will mobilize people under the banner of congress in our relentless struggle against the atrocious cpi(m) in west bengal, banerjee added.