People's Democracy

CPI(M) Protests Inflammatory Trinamul Propaganda

On May 20, Sitaram Yechury and Basudev Acharia met the union home minister and handed him over a letter on the unsubstantiated and wild allegations levelled by the Trinamul Congress (TMC). The text of the letter follows.

WE seek to draw your attention and intervention in a serious situation that is developing in the course of the current election campaign to municipal corporations in the state of West Bengal.

The enclosed letter from the chairman of the Left Front, Shri Biman Basu, explains how the Trinamul Congress leader and union railway minister is deliberately stoking panic and terror amongst the Muslim minority population, claiming that she has secret information that a section of the police will help the Left Front in unleashing communal violence in the state.

You are surely aware that during the last thirty three years of the Left Front government in West Bengal, the state and its people have seen unprecedented communal harmony and fraternity. This record makes all of us proud in India and is often portrayed as the symbol of India’s strength in secular democracy. You will surely agree that any effort to blemish this record are not in the interests of our country’s unity and integrity. Further, casting such wild and unsubstantiated allegations, especially by a union cabinet minister, also violates the provisions of the Representation of People Act 1951.

If indeed the TMC leader and union minister does possess some secret information, we request you as the union home minister to obtain such information and act on it in consultation with the state government. If, on the contrary, there is no such information, as surely is the case, then may we request you to set at rest the apprehensions and tensions that have resulted from the union minister’s utterances.