Mamata made volte-face on CPI-M: Mukul Roy

Lashing out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for sending birthday greetings to her predecessor Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and her comments on Tripura elections, BJP leader Mukul Roy on Friday accused her of making a volte-face and deveiating from her fight against the Leftists.

"At this moment, if there is any party in India which is capable of fighting the CPI-M, that is the Bharatiya Janata Party. Because Mamata has deviated from her fight (against the CPI-M). Mamata is saying it would be good if the CPI-M wins (in Tripura)," said Roy.

Banerjee had told Communist Party of India-Marxist lawmakers this week in the Assembly that she would have been happy "in a greater cause had they won the Tripura Assembly polls, but that is not to be".

Roy is a former Trinamool Congress leader, who later joined the BJP.

The votes in Tripura will be counted on Saturday, with the CPI-M led Left Front and challengers BJP locked in what analysts predicted as a "close fight".

Roy also attacked Banerjee for sending flowers, sweets, and a card to Bhattacherjee on his birthday (March 1).

"Mamata is sending birthday greetings to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.... But Mamata has forgotten that there was a day when she had gone to lay siege to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's house in protest against the blood that spilled in Nandigram," he said.

Nandigram in East Midnapore district was rocked by violence in 2006-2007 over the Left Front regime's bid to acquire farmland for setting up a petrochemical hub.

The peasants began a violent protest led by Banerjee's Trinamool, then the principal opposition party, and the flareup led to killings, police firing, and other disturbances, prompting the state government to declare that land would not be acquired for setting up the project.

However, the Nandigram movement, coupled with the peasant unrest in Hooghly district's Singur, led to the constant rise in Trinamool's political graph and it won the Assembly polls in 2011, ending the Left Front's 34-year rule.

"She came to power by splattering his (Bhattacharjee's) white kurta with blood. And now, after all this, the volte-face that we see on her part, that is something that she only is capable of," said Roy.

--IANS

ssp/tsb