People's Democracy

Foreign Funding For A Trinamul Candidate  

B Prasant

SRIDIP Bhattacharya, secretary, Howrah district committee of the CPI(M), has written to the Election Commission to say that a foreign construction agency, the corporate firm R B M (Pati) group of Malaysia involved in the work of the so-called golden quadrilateral plan of the union government has provided a considerable sum to the election fund of a Trinamul Congress candidate from Uluberia in Howrah.

The recent years has seen members of the management of the foreign firm, in disregard of the laws of the land, have accompanied the Trinamul Congress candidate during election tours.  A corporate manager of the agency, Tan Kim Fu was present when the Trinamul Congress nominee had filed his election papers in the office of the district magistrate of Howrah.

Between April 29 and 22, it is believed that the top man in the agency, Puk Fang Fee has had closed meetings with the Trinamul Congress supremo in Kolkata.  Incidentally, the Trinamul nominee from Uluberia, Rajiv Banerjee is himself an employee of the Malaysian firm.

The reason why the foreign firm was interested in the Trinamul candidate was not that he worked for them.  The reasons lay deeper.  In the task of road making to which the firm was entrusted with the responsibility by the union government, a wide-scale corruption has been going on.  Banerjee allegedly was the conduit through which funds are being siphoned off from the project.

The agency has also managed to slow down the pace of work and now the target has been placed at three years from 2003 instead of a year away which was the original target date.  In between, a worker died when a poorly constructed part of the road collapsed within itself. 

‘Fit certificates’ has been deposited by the agency via the Trinamul-BJP liaison pipeline, despite the fact that at least in five specific cases, the road work has been inspected and found to be of very inferior standard.  The inspection was done after the Uluberia MP, Hannan Mollah of the CPI(M) had written to the union government.

Sridip Bhattacharya while apprising the media of the matter said that the fact of a foreign agency getting to interfere in the politics of a sovereign nation was a dangerous portent for the nation itself.