Charging that the Lalgarh rally was organised by the Trinamool Congress to protect Maoists in the area, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said the effort was to negate the success of Central and West Bengal forces and provide a fillip to Maoists to “reorganise and relocate.”
Reacting to the rally in West Bengal, party Polit Bureau member and Member of Parliament Sitaram Yechury said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh owed an explanation to the country since he had said that Maoists were the gravest threat to internal security while a member of his Cabinet shared space with these forces.
“The Prime Minister has to answer to the country. It is a case of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds,” he said.
Responding to Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee's taunt that while she could enter the area without guns, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee could not do so even with police protection, Mr. Yechury said someone like Ms. Banerjee, who “openly [patronises]” Maoists did not require protection.
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, he said, had acknowledged that the People's Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) was a front for Maoists. The PCPA had now taken part in the rally with the Trinamool and no further evidence of the collusion between the political party and the Maoists was required, Mr. Yechury added.
In its resolution on West Bengal, the Extended Central Committee said the Maoists primarily targeted the poorest of the poor among the peasantry and tribals.
“Yet sections of the so-called intelligentsia continue to express sympathy. The unleashing of such large-scale violence, killings and arson by this reactionary combine is to seek the defeat of the Left Front through the most anti-democratic fascist methods,” it said.
