People's Democracy

B Prasant

THAT the Pradesh Congress "election manifesto" would not think twice of clinging to the weakest of excuses to justify its decision to hang onto the coattails of its new-found lodestar, the Trinamul Congress, was never in doubt. What came as a decidedly unpleasant surprise was the fact that it did easily outpace its offshoot in the amazing quantum of lies it could pack into such a small and rudimentary document. Indeed, the Pradesh Congress "election manifesto," which was released recently before a group of visibly bored media-persons by a glum-faced Pranab Mukherjee, seems set to make up its abject lack of political contentions by stupendous feats of lying.

For example, it attributes strings of "quotations" to CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Jyoti Basu and Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya that are simply too incongruous and fantastic to deserve even a nominal rejoinder. For a change of pace, it also reeled off statistics that clearly have no basis. Understandably, there is no reference to sources, any sources.

The document then proceeds to skate on thin ice by making a sheepish parody of a reference to the defence-related scams that compromises the moral high grounds that the BJP had once tried to claim for itself.

And of course the "election manifesto" did not even sought to justify the way the Pradesh Congress had to eat humble pie in public while being forced to prostrate itself before the Trinamul chieftains while desperately bargaining for a smattering of "winnable" seats.

Last but not the least, the "election manifesto" fights shy of even calling the Pradesh Congress by its official nomenclature, i e, the Indian National Congress. And thereby hangs a tale. Have instructions been sent from Delhi to make a visible distinction between the national-level braggadocio of the INC-led by Mrs Sonia Gandhi and its poor cousin, the Pradesh Congress unit of Bengal? The mind boggles.

As a postscript to the entire farcical exercise, Pranab Mukherjee stoutly denied Ms Mamata Banerjee ever having called the Pradesh Congress the "B" team of the Left Front in general and of the CPI(M) in particular. (INN)