The Park Circus ground here witnessed camaraderie on Wednesday when former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi shared the dais and vowed to fight common enemies — the Trinamool Congress and the BJP.
At his first public meeting during the poll campaign, Mr. Bhattacharjee referred to the Congress leader as “Dear Rahul”, and cited how his father, Rajiv Gandhi, had backed the Left Front government initiative on the three-tier panchayat structure.
Both Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Bhattacharjee were welcomed with a single garland and the CPI(M) leader was draped with a scarf of Congress tricolour. Mr. Bhattacharjee, a Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M), was not oblivious to the political significance of the public meeting attended by the Left Front and Congress candidates of south Kolkata, where slogans of “Inquilab Zindabad” and “Rahul Gandhi Jindabad” rent the air. “The people of Bengal, the people of Kolkata and the Park Circus ground had seen several public meetings but the one today is rare in our history when the Left and the Congress have come together,” said Pradesh Congress Committee chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
Underscoring the fact that the Trinamool could not be defeated alone, Mr. Bhattacharjee exuded confidence that the Left-Congress alliance would come to power. Targeting the Trinamool government on issues such as agrarian distress and attack on democracy, the former Chief Minister was most vocal about the lack of industries and jobs in the State.
Mr. Gandhi drew a parallel between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleging that both had gone back on their promises.
