The Congress dealt an embarrassing blow to Mamata Banerjees rhetoric against retail FDI Thursday,revealing that the TMC manifesto for the 2009 Lok Sabha election had promised exactly what the party was now opposing so vehemently. Mamata tried to explain that the manifesto was only a draft. But immediately after the Congress revelation,the document disappeared from the party website www.aitmc.org. West Bengal Congress chief Pradip Bhattacharya told a press conference at his party headquarters: In its 2009 Lok Sabha election manifesto,Trinamool had underlined the need for FDI,but now they are opposing it. Trinamools support to FDI was clearly mentioned in paragraph 42 on page number 43 of the manifesto. He showed a piece of paper with printed text in Bengali,the sentence corresponding to paragraph 42 translating as,Retail trade will see the entry of big capital from domestic and foreign investors. At Writers Buildings,Mamata said,What is being shown as the Trinamool manifesto was actually a draft copy that was sealed. A draft is first prepared and printed,and if an error is detected later,it is removed. A similar procedure is followed in newspaper offices too. Copy is rewritten as and when news develops further.
