Buddhadeb shows he is in command

Scotching speculation that he had lost grip over the state and was staring at an impending ouster, West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Monday asserted that he was very much in control.

At the end of a two-day Delhi visit, besides getting the Centre’s nod for the continuation of joint paramilitary and police operations against the Maoists, he threw a few barbs at Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. An increasingly aggressive Banerjee has been scoring political brownie points against him over the last few months.

Bhattacharjee said his agenda for the Delhi visit had been fulfilled at meetings with prime minister Manmohan Singh and home minister P Chidambaram. “I made two demands. First, the central troops should continue in West Bengal, and second, simultaneous operations be started in Jharkhand, which is actually the Maoist base. Both demands were accepted,” he said.  

To a question about his ‘impending resignation’, his reaction came couched in sarcasm. “I would just like to say that we have a free press, which is quite proficient at cooking up stories and spicing them up with sauce.”

Criticising Banerjee’s frequent outbursts against the state government’s action again the Maoists, he said: “When the prime minister has already declared Naxalism to be the biggest threat facing the country, how can a minister in his government make statements criticising action against them? I don’t take what she says seriously.”

He dismissed as “juvenile disorder” her comment that Bengal would go up in flames if intellectuals were touched.