Having first supported a government at the Centre led by the Bharatiya Janata Party and then one by the Congress, it was now for the Trinamool Congress to ally with the Bharatiya Janata Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said here on Sunday.
Indeed none else but the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi “extended an invitation” — at a rally here — to Trinamool chairperson Mamata Banerjee to join him, he told a Left Front rally at the Brigade Parade grounds.
“It is natural for him [Mr. Modi] to extend such an invitation. She [Ms. Banerjee] was a Union Minister in the Cabinet of Atal Bihari Vajpayee from 1999 to 2001. She left that government in 2001 only to side with the BJP for a second time in the 2004 election. In the 2009 Lok Sabha and 2011 Assembly polls in the State, she was with the Congress but now has parted ways with it… It’s time to ally with the BJP again,” Mr. Karat observed.
Former West Bengal Chief Minister and member of the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M), Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, said that an understanding between Trinamool and the BJP would spell disaster for the State.
‘People will suffer’
Referring to Mr. Modi’s comments at the party’s rally at the same venue four days ago that with a Trinamool Congress government in the State people would have laddus’ “in both hands” if the BJP were voted to power at the Centre, Mr. Bhattacharjee said if that were the case the people would have to suffer.
“Narendra Modi is talking about two laddus — one of BJP and other of Trinamool Congress… The people will suffer if they eat these laddus , he said.
Mr. Bhattacharjee questioned the “Modi model” of growth and said that unlike West Bengal land was not distributed to the poor in Gujarat. “We will be fighting the Lok Sabha election on alternative policies. Who will be the Prime Minister it is not a big issue for us; we are considering issues like universal public distribution system, control on prices of fuel and are against the privatisation of banks and insurance companies.”
