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| Edited By: Arshad Ali |Source: DNA |Updated: May 06, 2017, 07:25 AM IST
Why should I regret it? My highest leadership had been kind enough to entrust upon me the charge of West Bengal PCC. I am a basically grassroot Congress worker and I at that time felt elated and elevated because there was no dearth of Congress leadership in Bengal but still the highest leadership entrusted their faith in me. So there is no reason to regret because it was a political promotion for me as before this I was the district president of Murshidabad.
In 2014, Congress party was a ruling party in India when I was handed over the baton in 2014 election, Congress got a severe political and electoral drubbing. As a result BJP had emerged with a mammoth victory which even they had imagined. In spite of all odds put together, Congress in West Bengal had fairly scored in the electoral battle of 2016 Assembly election. Out of the 92 Assembly seats which we contested we had been able to secure 44 and if you draw a comparison with the electoral results of other states in the contemporary period you can easily come to the conclusion that our achievement in West Bengal was satisfactory. We are suffering from severe constraints of fund in the state. We have been out of power for the past four decades. Violence and atrocities against us by the ruling regime were the reasons behind Congress' defeat in Delhi. These are the adversities and unsavoury situations that we are to confront in West Bengal. So naturally I am not in a position to say yes we have achieved something marvellous but at the same time, in view of adversities we have achieved no less.
The only objective of the ruling regime is to wipe out the last vestige of Congress party from the soil of West Bengal. While they are offering huge enticements in terms of money, power, sops and perquisites to those elected Congress member ranging from Panchayat to member of legislative assembly. The police at the behest of the ruling party are fabricating false charges against active Congress workers. Somewhere we failed to catch hold of them because they were succumbed to the allurements offered by the ruling regime. You may construe it as a failure of our party.
The Chief Minister of West Bengal has herself introduced the policy of polarisation in the state. If you go by the political antecedents attached to the political career of Mamata, you will see that only to reap up political harvest she never dithered to join hands with anybody irrespective of colour, creed and political morality. In order to secure a captive vote bank in Bengal, she was seen offering various religious posters only to appease the minority population here. Now, when the BJP has started to rear up their uncouth face, the same Mamata Banerjee who had been in a way of competitive fundamentalism, started worshipping Hindu gods and goddesses ostensibly to please the Hindu community, who, she fears, might be switching over to the more aggressive communal pitching of BJP.
Certainly. Some sorts of polarisation have started working here. What is white I will have to say it white. BJP has been burning their midnight oil to exploit this kind of political situation in Bengal. The state was alien to caste and communal politics but now I cannot say that Bengal is immune to communal politics. The BJP has already been striving hard to drive a wedge along the communal lines in West Bengal to score political brownie points and to some extent they have succeeded.
No. Actually at that time our party candidly made an electoral alliance with the Left parties and everybody witnessed that our Central leadership, even Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had shared the dais with Left party candidates and leaders. But after the election the Left parties had started displaying their uneasiness with the alliance of our party because in some of their constituents they were insisting upon to snap off the ties. But our option remains open. It is only the Left party who had demonstrated their flip flop attitude vis-a-vis the Congress party. So if they think that alliance with the Congress should be formed afresh, then I can say that our option is still open because I think that the ingress of BJP should be stemmed.
I am not hinting anything. It is our open option. I am not resorting to any political trickery. Both the Congress and the CPIM are to fight for their existence and in order to continue their political existence we would have no alternative but to forge an alliance because already we have lost a great deal of time so now it is not a simple option but a necessity to think anew, to have a fresh introspection so that we can explore a way out to continue our political existence along with fighting the communal surge in West Bengal.
