The Left on Wednesday protested on the Parliament premises against attacks on opposition parties in West Bengal by the Trinamool Congress.
Staging a demonstration at the main gate, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the CPI, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Forward Bloc said the attacks reflected the Trinamool’s “frustration” over “marginalisation” in the State.
Inside the Lok Sabha, the Left members stormed the well and they tried to raise in the issue in the Rajya Sabha also, amid din.
Biggest attack on democracy
Meanwhile, the CPI(M) released a booklet, “Save Democracy Against the Politics of Terror and Violence in West Bengal,’’ which said the just-concluded panchayat elections saw the biggest attack on democracy and democratic rights of the people.
The Trinamool’s “violence and terror” against all political opponents brought back “memories of the 1972 rigged elections in West Bengal. Between June 3 and July 25, as many as 24 CPI(M) cadres or supporters have been killed. But the violence is not restricted to the CPI(M),” it said.
The large-scale violence, terror and rigging extended even to counting. In several places, where Opposition candidates or independents were leading, TMC gangs tore up ballot papers and drove out other counting agents, and even seats won by opponents were forcibly declared as the TMC’s tally the CPI(M) said.
In the last elections, when the Left Front government was in power, the TMC won a majority of gram panchayats, the CPI (M) said, pointing to the free and fair exercise then. Now “The terror and attack on democracy, though widespread in character, also has a class angle, the aim being the reversal of the pro-poor development policies and gains of the poor people under the Left Front government,” the booklet said.
