West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan sought here on Thursday to clear the “misconception” that “he does not have any knowledge about how the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) operates,” after he made a statement that the attack of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Cabinet colleagues “is serious enough to warrant a public apology” by the party’s Polit Bureau.
“He has been a student of Communism for over six decades and has read and digested works of Marx, Engels and Mao and has spoken extensively at national and international conferences on the subject of Communism,” a statement issued by the Governor’s Secretariat said during the day.
Biman Bose, CPI(M) State secretary, had said on Wednesday that Mr. Narayanan might be knowing how the police operates but does not know how the party’s Polit Bureau does.
ADVERTISEMENT
“One of the basic axiom of the communist ideology is the principle of ‘democratic centralism’ and it is in this context that a suggestion was made that an apology by the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) was warranted on account of some of the lower functionaries of the CPI(M) and its bodies,” Mr. Narayanan said.
Several leaders of the CPI(M)’s Polit Bureau from the State, including Mr. Bose, former Chief Minister Buddadeb Bhattacharjee and Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Surya Kanta Mishra, have condemned the attack on the State’s Finance Minister Amit Mitra at Yojana Bhavan in New Delhi on Tuesday.