Still an year for assembly polls, says Mamata

Putting rest to speculations that the West Bengal Assembly polls - due next year- may be advanced, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said there was still a year left for the polls.

Presenting the budget speech for the home department in the assembly, she slammed the erstwhile Left Front government and stressed on the development initiated by the ruling Trinamool Congress since coming to power in 2011.

"We have done a lot of work in the past four years and still a lot is to be done. We have one more year till the next elections and we will have to continue ushering in growth and development," said Banerjee, also the Trinamool chairperson.

Buoyed by the massive victory in the recent civic polls in Kolkata and 91 municipalities across the state, there have been speculations that the Trinamool may advance the assembly polls.

Slamming the erstwhile Left Front government for plunging the state into a debt trap, Banerjee enumerated a host of social security schemes initiated by her government and asserted its commitment towards development.

"With the blessings of the people at large we will come to power again and continue doing the good work.

"From setting up new hospitals, police stations, schools, colleges and training institutes, to bring back the youth of left-wing extremism-affected areas into the mainstream, we have done everything."

She also rubbished the opposition's charges of violence during the recent civic polls.

"The polls both at the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and other municipalities were free and peaceful. But the thing due to so many polls, the government is left with little time to work. We had the civic polls, before that we had the panchayat polls and the byelections, so that leaves a government with just two and half years to work (in a five-year tenure)," added Banerjee.