Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has found an unusual supporter from the State Congress leadership for her statement made in the United Kingdom regarding India’s chances of making it to the top of the world economy ladder in the coming decades. Taking a diametrically opposite line from the one taken by former Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury, his successor Suvbhankar Sarkar on Sunday backed Banerjee for her statement on an alleged “bleak future” of the Indian economy in the coming decades.
“The Chief Minister was asked as to whether India will become the largest economy by 2060s or whether we will become the third largest economy anytime soon … she expressed her doubt … I think she did the right thing because telling the truth wherever one goes cannot be judged anti-national … she must have considered the fact that in a country where the GDP is falling … where inflation is steeply rising … where the value of currency is falling in a matching pace … where 80 percent of the people have to survive on Government doles and where the difference between the rich and the poor is increasing every day … you cannot expect that country to become the world’s biggest economy anytime soon … so she has said the right thing,” Sarkar said, prompting the BJP to hit back wondering whether the PCC was once again trying to lick the foot of the TMC.
“They have already been reduced to zero in Bengal and have been trying to remain afloat anyhow … so perhaps they are now trying to impress Mamata Banerjee to remain politically relevant … but this will take them to the level of extinction,” Bengal BJP president Sukanto Majumdar said in reaction to Sarkar’s statement. The BJP national leadership had earlier slammed Banerjee for “insulting India and bringing the motherland to disrepute in a foreign land.”
Meanwhile, in a related and parallel development close on the heels of a section of senior Trinamool Congress leaders expressing displeasure at the party rank-and-file’s indifference to the insult heaped on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee — by the activists of Students Federation of India — during a speech in a London college TMC workers on Sunday spilled on the streets taking “revenge” on the members of SFI in various parts of Bengal, sources said.
SFI is the students’ arm of CPI(M). Reports of attacks on SFI allegedly by Trinamool Congress Chatra Parishad — a TMC students’ wing — came in from Dinhata in North Bengal, Baruipur and Durgapur in South Bengal, sources said.
Members of the TMCP attacked their SFI counterparts at a Dinhata school where the SFI was organizing a cricket league. Two of their members were injured and had to be hospitalised. Similar incidents took place at Durgapur where several SFI men students were injured when they were allegedly attacked by the TMC workers.
