People's Democracy

B Prasant

WITH dwindling crowds turning up at her rallies, Trinamul Congress chief Ms Mamata Banerjee has opted for another ploy to try and draw attention away from reality, to fiction.

Mamata recently was on record saying that not only was she under "threat from the CPI(M)" but that, by blocking approach roads, CPI(M) workers had forced her to turn up late at a rally at Kotulpur in Bankura, a couple of days back. She has refused police escort as a note of "protest" against all such "conspiracies being hatched against me."

The state’s chief electoral officer Sabyasachi Sen and IG (law-and-order) Prasun Mukherjee have already put themselves on record, saying that there was no truth in Ms Mamata’s claims and that no evidence has been found to substantiate her charge of road blocking. Sen said that he would keep the Election Commission fully informed of the development.

In the meantime, CPI(M) Polite Bureau member Biman Basu said he was addressing a meeting at Kotulpur when the alleged "road blocking" incident was supposed to have taken place. He said the vast assemblage of people at that rally had spilled right across the road running by.

It was logical on the part of the police that they diverted Ms Mamata Banerjee’s convoy of cars through another route, on to her scheduled stop at Arambagh in the adjoining Hooghly district. The real reason why the Trinamul Congress had flown off the handle, said Biman Basu, "is to be found in the fact of her finding lesser and lesser number of people choosing to come and listen to her at her election meetings."

Responding to the tasteless remark that Ms Mamata Banerjee made about Biman Basu that he was a "run-of-the-mill" leader of the CPI(M), Basu merely reminded the media: "The rallies addressed by the "run-of-the-mill" leader have been drawing more people than those where Mamata Banerjee has been the principal speaker."

As far as Ms Banerjee’s claim about not using a helicopter for electioneering is concerned, Biman Basu set the record straight by noting that Ms Mamata did not get a helicopter since she had delayed her official application for the requisition of a helicopter.

The chief electoral officer Sabyasachi Sen has also clarified that no attempt was made by anyone to "burn Ms Mamata Banerjee alive," as per her claim, at the Suri guesthouse in the Birbhum district recently. The small smoldering fire, which was put out quickly enough, was caused by an electrical short circuit. (INN)