CPI(M) campaign soon to ‘defend’ Left in Bengal

The party said it will highlight the situation in West Bengal and the “attacks” by “reactionary forces” on the Left Front government,expose the Trinamool-Maoist “nexus” and galvanise support from democratic forces to defend the Left.

Briefing the media about the deliberations at the four-day Extended Central Committee meeting of the party that concluded here on Tuesday,CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat said the Trinamool Congress and the outlawed Maoists forged a “nexus” in West Bengal while other “reactionary forces” were making efforts to damage the Left.

He termed the Trinamool Congress-Congress tie-up a “combination with strains and stresses” and emphasised that the main target of CPI(M) in West Bengal was the Trinamool. “Congress is only a junior partner in the alliance with TC,” he said.

The CPI(M) faces a crucial electoral test next year in the state,where the party had been defeated by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool in nearly all elections at various levels starting from the Lok Sabha polls in 2009.

Karat once again demanded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should say where the government of India stood on the issue of Trinamool’s “collaboration” with the Maoists in the light of Mamata’s rally at Naxal stronghold Lalgarh on Monday.

The CPI(M) would expose the Trinamool -Maoist “nexus” in the state where more than 250 party workers were killed by the outlaws in recent times,he said. “Of the 250 killed,38 were adivasis,” Karat said.

The CPI(M) General Secretary admitted that the Nandigram episode damaged the party’s image but blamed it on the “sustained vilification campaign” launched by the Trinamool and other opposition parties.

“We are against the acquisition of large tracts of land for Special Economic Zones,mining companies and corporates. We will stand with farmers and tribals against forcible acquisition of land under the 1984 Land Acquisition Act.”

“We want the Act scrapped and a new legislation brought in that will ensure acquisition of land through consent and payment of adequate compensation and rehabilitation to the owners,” Karat said.

He asserted that the Left Front government in West Bengal was not allowing large SEZs on hundreds and thousands of acres of land. There were only three notified SEZs in the Left-ruled state,he pointed out.