People's Democracy

Trinamul Disrupting All Attempts At Normalcy At Nandigram: Biman

Five CPI(M) Workers Kidnapped

TRINAMUL Congress, aided and abetted by the Naxalites, SUCI, and their running mates, has wilfully carried on activities to disrupt attempts at restoration of normalcy at Nandigram. Acts of provocation are being routinely indulged in. Murder and mayhem are committed with impunity. Lies and canards are spread around, and the CPI(M) and the Left Front constantly maligned.

Biman Basu, Bengal unit secretary of the CPI(M) and Bengal Left Front chairman said this unequivocally while speaking to the media at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan during the late evening of April 30. He said that fresh assaults were organised against the CPI(M) workers at Nandigram during April 30 and five CPI(M) workers were kidnapped. The CPI(M) leader feared that the kidnapped workers might well have met a terrible end especially after being whisked away into a Trinamul Congress stronghold.

The Trinamul Congress and other members of the Bengal opposition, noted Biman Basu, would not respond to the open call by the chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for a discussion across the table, on any issue the opposition might choose to posit. All-party meetings are routinely boycotted.

Now, regular armed assaults are organised against CPI(M) workers at Nandigram. Women and children are not spared. Close to three thousand people are eking out a life of harsh survival at relief camps. Five hundred more would join their ranks after the armed assaults of April 29 and 30. Nearly thirty dwelling places were looted and then set on fire on April 30 itself.

Biman Basu wondered as to how the Trinamul Congress supremo could have letters of complaints at the ready and addressed to the president of India, the prime minister, and the Bengal governor within less than a couple of hours after the attack on CPI(M) workers at Nandigram had commenced. ‘Did she have previous information? Was everything well-planned in advance?’ Biman Basu wondered aloud.

The Left Front chairman pointed out that the undoubtedly provoking speech by the Trinamul Congress chieftain a few days back when she had declared that the ‘Red Flag would be obliterated from Khejuri, Nandigram, and Haldia,’ encouraged the Trinamul Congress killers to run loose over April 29 and 30 at Nandigram and in adjoining villages, killing two CPI(M) workers, and leaving dozens of others injured, including frail old women, and children.

Biman Basu appealed to all concerned and especially to CPI(M) workers not to be provoked by acts of commission of the Trinamul Congress, and to work deeply and relentlessly amongst the mass of the people, moving towards unmasking and isolating thoroughly the Trinamul Congress and its lackeys from the people. ‘Let there start and continue a free and frank dialogue with the people where questions would be answered and doubts cleared up,’ concluded Biman Basu.