People's Democracy

 

                        Buddhadeb Addresses

                        Huge Rally in Medinipur

                        B Prasant

 

CLOSE to eighty thousand people attended the huge rally that the CPI(M) and Left Front organised at Medinipur town. Biman Basu later told us that given the expected size of the gathering, the only option for a venue was the Medinpur town and nowhere else.  The rally was held during the bright afternoon of October 2. 

 

The venue at the vast grass knoll opposite the Midnapore College and school was filled to capacity as was the area surrounding it.  The big rally ground was quite apparently too small a place for the vast number of people who descended on the town to listen to Buddhadeb, and other CPI(M) leaders present.

 

Buddhadeb began by noting that the masses must foil the dirty game of the Trinamul Congress to destabilise Bengal with inchoate violence.  The target of that lying outfit was the jangal mahal in the western part of the state.  In parts of these three districts comprising jangal mahal area and during a period of a year more than 200 CPI(M) workers were killed. The danger may not remain confined to the western districts only, and like in the case of the Naxalites of yore, the killings may edge closer to the metropolis, warned Buddhadeb.

 

The people had defeated the Naxalites; the people shall defeat the Trinamul Congress and its lackeys on the deviationist left and the reactionary right. The people have turned round and they are face-to-face in a fearless mood to the menace that endangers their lives and livelihoods.  Caution must be exercised so that no further killings take place. The people must remain united against the cowardly assaults. The Trinamul Congress frequents the western parts of Bengal to provide succour to the ‘Maoist’ terrorists, he charged.

 

The Trinamulis stood on an edifice of lies and more lies, said Buddhadeb.  Who organised meetings with those elements whom the subsequent enquiry revealed to have been behind the railway sabotages that killed scores of ordinary people?  The state government has provided compensation to the families afflicted by the railway accidents and acts of sabotage.

 

A truck driver was falsely implicated and sent to jail by the Trinamuli chief on a trumped up charge of having barged into her convoy with the truck, which he had been driving, and the brakes of which vehicle had failed, as later enquiries showed.

 

The rally was also addressed by CPI(M) and other Left Front leaders.  They included Dipak Sarkar (CPI-M), Santosh Rana (CPI), Netai Jana (SP), Sukumar Bhuinya (FB), and Shakti Bhattacharya (RSP).  Later in the week, the Trinamul Congress held a rally in Midnapore where most of the rallyists were trucked across from other districts.

 

AIDWA RALLY

IN KOLKATA

 

Earlier, Buddhadeb addressed a rally in Kolkata organised by the AIDWA on the occasion of its state conference. The mass of the people of Bengal, said Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, would ensure that attempts at anarchy currently in embryo evidence across the state at the behest of the Trinamul Congress and its goons, were foiled in a comprehensive manner. 

 

The Trinamul Congress is out to tread underfoot, if it could, the traditional secular-democratic values that have been cherished over the ages in this part of the country – but they will not succeed in the heinous game-plan.  Lies and terror shall not be accepted by the masses of Bengal.  Bengal shall never allow itself to be plunged into the darkness of despotism and anarchy.

 

In addressing the open rally of the state conference of the Bengal unit of the AIDWA, Buddhadeb went on to say that the Trinamul Congress, and it was difficult to categorise them into a political outfit, is a coterie of counter-democratic elements, and it was a menace in every sense of the term – they nurture no values, respect no democratic norms, and utter lies and not truth whenever given half of the chance to do so.

 

The outfit has joined willing hands with the proto-separatists of North Bengal, have had an intimate and ongoing relationship with the violence personified in the ‘Maoists,’ and have clung to the road of the wrong and the big lie repeated ad nauseum.

 

The outfit and its chieftain – there is only one chief, and the rest grovel at her feet as Buddhadeb put it – have come solicitously forward to the aid of the ‘left’ terrorists who are now flailing in the face of the people’s resistance, by calling for the joint forces ops to be withdrawn. 

 

Why should they do that?  Is it because they look to the ‘left’ anarchists to clear the ground for them to fly their banner and run amuck, terrorising the people twice, many times, over?  This plot must be foiled and the people of the forest areas are up in their thousands to ensure that the game plan never succeeds.

 

Among other who addressed the packed rally were the all-India and state AIDWA leadership including Brinda Karat, Sudha Sundararaman, and Shyamali Gupta, and Minati Ghosh.