Mamata starts election campaign

Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee today started her party’s campaign for the ensuing Assembly elections in West Bengal with an impressive rally here, amid calls for a change of guard in the Left-ruled state.

She indicated her party would be ready to have a pre-poll alliance with the Congress. “We have SUCI, a minor Left party, with us. We would like to have alliance with the Congress as well,” she said.

She stated the Election Commission would announce the dates of the polls in another 10-12 days and asked her supporters to brace themselves. Banerjee also called on the Opposition parties to stay united to defeat the Left Front, which has been ruling the state uninterrupted since 1977.

To broaden her base among the masses, Banerjee, for the last two years, had been deliberately embracing some Leftist slogans. Her electoral manifesto during the 2009 general elections had also echoed some Leftist lines like opposition to special economic zones and entry of foreign direct investment into many core sectors.

Today, while making a direct appeal to the state’s Left-minded middle class and intelligentsia, the Trinamool chief assured them she would not abandon Leftism if she came to power in the state. “The Left Front is bad, but Leftism is good,” she declared.

Referring to her efforts on initiating many railway projects “for the economic development of the state”, she challenged the CPI(M)-led government to match her performance. “What I have done in the last one and half years for the state, they could not do that in 35 years,” Banerjee she. She also observed that the much-promised steel plant in Salboni by the Jindal group had not materialised and the existing industries in Durgapur, Kalyani, Asansol and elsewhere were either functioning poorly or had shut down.