The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has no option but organising public rallies across the State for it can no longer remain silent in the face of the ‘dangerous situation’ the Trinamool Congress government is pushing West Bengal into, the former Chief Minister and member of the party’s Polit Bureau Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said on Sunday.
“The people of the State wanted a new government and a new government came to power… We too wanted to see what it would do and what change it would bring. Now we are having to hold rallies, as it will be wrong to stay silent considering the goings-on around us,” he told a rally organised by the CPI(M)’s North 24 Parganas district committee at Dum Dum in the northern outskirts of the city.
Alleging that all development had come to a standstill in the State with both the industrial and agricultural sectors languishing, Mr. Bhattacharjee said the State government instead of directing its resources for the development of the State, was “bringing out full-page advertisements in newspapers and to funding festivals.”
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“The city is being painted blue and trident street lamps being put up even as the government claims it has no money. Is this not expenditure? The government’s money is public money and it must explain such expenses to the people,” he said.
“The government has no industrial policy; it had not moved a single step forward in the past year and eight months [of the Trinamool Congress government being in power]… companies are leaving Sector V [the IT hub in the city’s Salt Lake area]. In the agrarian sector farmers are committing suicide.”
Alleging that industrialists were no longer keen to invest in the State, he said leaders of today’s ruling party had, when in the Opposition, sought to confuse the people and put fear in them that the government (of the Left Front) was out to grab their land. “We had wanted development… Singur today has become a crematorium.”
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As for the law and order situation, it is worsening by the day, he charged. “Anti-socials have realised that they can get away with anything, the party in power is theirs as is the government… Not only are they being provided shelter; the signals being sent out from Writers’ Buildings [the State Secretariat] say ‘what is happening is all right, it is nothing’.”
Rubbishing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s contention that her government had already achieved nearly all she had promised before assuming office, he said even after 34 years in power the Left Front had never made such a claim. “There was always so much more work to be done.”
Mr. Bhattacharjee said: “We are reaching out to the people, to draw their attention to what is happening all around. It was the people who had sought to remove us [the Left Front] from power… It is they who will have the last word; who will judge how much was wrong then and how much is wrong now.”