With the elections to 81 civic bodies in West Bengal just nine days away, Biman Bose, chairman of the Left Front Committee in the State, came down heavily on the Trinamool Congress on Friday for allegedly trying to create confusion in the minds of the electorate and stoke religious passions through its “campaign of lies.”
Mr. Bose, who is also secretary of the West Bengal State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), appealed to the workers and supporters of the Left parties not to fall prey to the provocations of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who he said was trying to create anarchy and lawlessness.
Poser to Mamata
Referring to Ms. Banerjee's remarks at a rally earlier this week that she had a “secret report” that the Left Front government was planning communal riots in certain parts of the city, Mr. Bose said: “It is the bounden duty of every Minister to inform [such a thing] the Home Minister. He wondered whether she had done so. “Such utterances during a political campaign are in violation of the provisions of the Representation of the People Act as well as the Constitution.”
Reiterating that the Trinamool Congress had links with the Maoists in the State and was one with the militants in attacking the workers and supporters of the Left parties, Mr. Bose alleged that Ms. Banerjee's party “has been supporting the separatist forces in the Darjeeling Hills as well as the Dooars in north Bengal.”
Sees conspiracy
While the Left Front was working to ensure harmony among different communities in the region, a conspiracy was hatched to attenuate the ethnic divide for electoral gains. “The Trinamool Congress has been bent on vitiating the political atmosphere in the State, especially after the Lok Sabha elections last year.”
On the Trinamool Congress's alleged links with the Maoists, Mr. Bose said that far from being critical of sabotage and killings carried out by the rebels, it only welcomed them. “After all, if a CPI(M) worker is killed, why should it be condemned? It will instead be welcome [by the Trinamool Congress].”
