People's Democracy

TRINAMUL RAMPAGE INSIDE ASSEMBLY

Statewide Condemnation Rallies Held

B Prasant

TRINAMUL Congress MLAs ran rampage throughout the chamber and lobby of the Bengal state assembly in the afternoon of November 30. They also launched a murderous attack on the Left Front members of the assembly, severely injuring at least six.

The benches and desks were uprooted and broken into splinters and fragments. The electronic audio system was ripped out and stomped into smithereens. Lights were struck down with pieces of furniture. This was done in the assembly chamber itself. 

SMASHING SPREE

Outside of the chamber in the assembly lobby and in full view of the glare of TV cameras, Trinamul Congress MLAs ripped out fixtures. They broke open shelves, smashed tables and chairs, and destroyed precious assembly documents including proceedings’ files. They also pulled down with impunity paintings of chief ministers who had belonged to the Congress.

All this was done amidst shouting of slogans praising Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee. The chieftain herself stood in the assembly lobby and can be said to have egged on the 20-odd Trinamul Congress MLAs into running riot and baying for the blood of Left Front legislators. She kept on waving a copy of the Indian Constitution that she initially held upside down till a solicitous cameraperson gently chided her into putting it the right way up, while unprintable words of gross abuse poured out from her lips, words that would shock even the wildest of rowdies in the rougher quarters of the country. 

The shameful incident at the assembly was followed by the burning down of four State-run buses, putting to torch of cars and motorcycles, and holding up traffic at more than a dozen points in the city, albeit briefly before being chased away by the irate people of the area.

To cover up for the gross misdeeds that made the day a dark day for democracy, Mamata Banerjee promptly announced a 12-hour bandh on December 1, a bandh that was ‘morally supported’ by the Pradesh Congress and the BJP.

MISDEEDS PROTESTED

Protest marches, rallies, and street corner meetings were organised right from early in the evening of November 30. Held under the aegis of the Bengal CPI(M) and the Bengal Left Front, the processions and meetings roundly condemned the Trinamul Congress rampage within the assembly house, and called upon the people to foil the counter-democratic, anti-development, anti-employment, and anti-industrialisation bandh called by the party.

Briefing the media at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan late in the evening, CPI(M) state secretary, and Bengal LF chairman Biman Basu described the acts as the frustrated outpouring of a politically-directionless outfit that had no moral principles to depend on and that was anti-people and counter-democratic to the core.

The propaganda unleashed by a large section of the corporate media notwithstanding, there was no substance at all in the Trinamul chieftain’s claim that she was wrongly detained while proceeding for a ‘Lakshmi Puja’ at Singur. She was, in fact, travelling in a car with two other large vehicles following, and the entourage included a section of the state Trinamul Congress leadership who are staunch loyalists of hers.

The state Left Front government had already clamped Section 144 in Singur in fear of a collision course having been set by the Trinamul Congress which repeatedly announced that ‘blood will flow at Singur sooner than later.’ Indeed, when the Bengal Left Front asked permission of the local administration to hold a rally at Singur on December 5, as announced in the massive November 29 meeting, the request was turned down on grounds of Section 144 having been put in place since.

PRE-PLANNED

The Trinamul leadership got into an ugly confrontation with the police on the Durgapur expressway itself, at the gateway of Singur before they were persuaded to turn back from the ostensible religious ceremony. A pre-planned move then followed when the Trinamul Congress chieftain stormed into the assembly lobby and started to signal through provocative outbursts the Trinamul Congress MLAs into going on a rampage. This was clearly a pre-ordained move, as was the call for a bandh. 

The lurid pictures that the Bengal TV channels have run continuously showing the foul acts of the Trinamul Congress MLAs in the assembly depict the outfit in its true colours for everybody to see and stand in fear of the message that comes clearly through of a proto-fascist terror recalling to mind the fateful days of the 1970s.