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West Bengal : Trinamool Congress gets set to hog limelight |
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In a bid to come back to prominence in mainstream politics, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has outlined an elaborate “weekend” agitation programme of her party after her intra-party elections failed to reshuffle the highly criticized Trinamool structure. Retaining her comrade-in-arms in similar positions with minor changes, the former Union Railway Minister identified several populist issues like increase in tuition fees in state-run colleges, hike in electricity tariff in the city, water tax for slum dwellers, increase in health services prices, issuing of licences for foreign liquor shops and bars and the influx of “refugees” from Bangladesh to launch a campaign against the Communist Government in West Bengal.
“We have to launch a series of unending agitations to expose the failure of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s six-month-old Left Front Government. Every Saturday there will be street-corner meetings, and processions on Sundays in Calcutta and the rest of West Bengal. If police create problems regarding permission for our rallies, we will hold them on weekdays,” she said. Urging party workers to shift from personality based politics to cadre-based politics, Mamata asked them to renew the “fight against the CPI-M now that the festive season is over.”
Referring to the influx of people from Bangladesh, Mamata said: “The minorities crossing over are not infiltrators, but refugees. They have fled their homes because they have been compelled. So they should be protected by the Government and relief camps set up.” She also urged Trinamool leaders in the border districts to open relief camps. She launched a scathing attack on the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC) for pushing a tariff hike and accused it of being hand-in-glove with the ruling party. “The increase in college fees and almost abolition of free health care show that the Marxists are filling their pockets with people’s money in the name of improving these services. Buddhadeb’s honeymoon period is now over. He should show results or bow out,” she said.
Mamata also came down heavily on the Government’s liberal attitude towards issuing licences for more retail outlets in the city and districts of Indian-made foreign liquor and bars. “Many of them (the shops and bars) are in residential areas. The Government should not do this as a section of the youth may be attracted to the menace of alcohol. This can ruin the youth and their family,” she said, threatening to start an indefinite agitation on issues affecting common people.
Mamata’s hopes of immediately getting into the Union Cabinet, after her re-entry into the NDA, have not yet materialized. The BJP chief is against Cabinet posts for leaders who had left the NDA at the time of their choosing and returned after they had been humbled in the elections. The same is true of the PMK, which also left on the eve of the Tamil Nadu poll and failing to make a mark, came to the NDA.
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