While the critics saw in it a “clear sign of unease” Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday launched a frontal attack on the left and the Congress for trying to form an unholy alliance comprising their basic ideology.
Speaking on the occasion of Maati Utsav (earth festival) in Burdwan the Bengal Chief Minister said the “people will discard any unholy alliance where basic ideology is compromised in quest of power” and said the real alliance had already taken among the people of the State who will again vote her to power in the coming State elections like they did in 2011.
“I have delivered on all my promises and whatever is left will be done next time” Banerjee said wondering why the left was tling of industrialisation now when they could have done so in the 34 years of their rule. “I have done in four years what the other parties could not do in 64 years of their rule and yet they are launched a disinformation campaign in order to malign my Government.”
The Chief Minister also attacked the BJP-led Centre for doing “precious little” for the State. “Only lip service and nothing more we have got from the Centre,” she said adding “they are not only taking away thousands of crores as interests on loans taken by the left Government but they have also stopped Central grants so that our projects have stopped” Banerjee alleged.
“The Centre has stopped 90 percent of the ICDS money and grants for other projects have also not come despite big promises they made. But we are not going to stop and carry on with our developmental works.”
The State leaders of the left and the Congress parties have been making a strong case for an alliance in the coming elections. In fact former Chief Minister and Marxist veteran Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee earlier asked from a public meeting whether the Congress was willing to join the people’s alliance against the Trinamool misrule.
“The people are watching. We have made our position clear. Now it is for the Congress to decide on whether they are willing to join the cause to save the State from turmoil” Bhattacharjee said. In fact senior State Congress leaders including its PCC president Adhir Chowdhury and Abdul Mannan on Tuesday said a left-Congress understanding was only a matter of time because “the people have already come together irrespective or what the leaders say.”
The Chief Minister is apprehensive of an electoral loss if the left and the Congress joins hands said BN Chakrabarty a political expert adding “even by the 2014 election standard — which was in any case not fully free and fair elections — then the two parties can jointly poll about 39 percent as against Trinamool’s 39.5 percent” he said.