CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechury has said that Union Minister for Railways Mamata Banerjee’s reported speech at Lalgarh in West Bengal only reconfirmed what his party has been saying all along.
Talking to reporters at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in Kochi on Saturday, Mr. Yechury said that whatever had been happening as far as Trinamool Congress was concerned was only a reconfirmation of what the CPI (M) had been stating all along.
What Mamta Banerjee said in Lalgarh reconfirmed that she and the Maoists were working in tandem, he said. “We have said in the past that it is an irreconcilable situation where the Prime Minister of the country saying that the Maoist violence poses the gravest danger to India’s internal security. And you have a Union Cabinet Minister patronising and supporting the Maoist activities and in fact terming the killing of a Maoist leader by security forces as a fake encounter. In normal circumstances this should be completely untenable,” Mr. Yechury said.
Asked whether the party would insist on Ms. Banerjee’s dismissal, the MP said that it was a call that the Congress and the United Progressive Alliance government will have to take. “We have raised this issue in the Parliament and asked the Prime Minister to explain how he was living with this contradiction,” Mr. Yechury said.
Mr. Yechury had come to visit fellow Parliamentarian and party member P.R. Rajan who was convalescing at AIMS. He expressed satisfaction about the progress Mr. Rajan was making.
“He is not only conscious and articulate but the way he gripped my hand said that he has a lot of strength back in the body. I am very happy and satisfied and feel that he is being taken good care of,” Mr. Yechury said.
