Bengal Opposition parties scoffed at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for “literally kneeling before the investors to sink money in a State which pursues possibly the worst kind of anti-industry policy.”
The Chief Minister had on Monday appealed to “my industrialist friends with folded hands to take a 50 per cent subsidy” and “whatever else you want but invest in the far-flung districts of Bengal.”
Reacting to her desperate appeal for investment former CPI(M) MP Samik lahiri said that “by pursuing a peculiar land policy and ignoring and allowing the horrible law and situation to continue in the State she has only made an industrial crematorium in Bengal. No one will come here till she is the Chief Minister.”
In a public meeting in North Bengal the Chief Minister had urged the industrialists to “come and invest in Bengal and we will provide you with whatever help you want.”
Ridiculing Banerjee’s “desperate appeal before the State elections” Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said “her appeal with folded hands and assertion of 50 per cent subsidy only proves the hollowness of the tall claims that her Government makes about the so-called industrial success during her regime.”
Incidentally right from the beginning the Chief Minister had been claiming 90 percent success rate on all her promises she had made to the voters before coming to power in the 2011 Assembly elections.
The State BJP leadership was more attacking when its said that despite the Chief Minister’s trips to london and Singapore seeking investments things ended in a big whimper. “Though she went with a big entourage to london and Singapore and other parts of the country there was not a single investment coming,” the BJP leadership said.
On whatever small activity that is taking place at the Jindal’s plant in Purulia after a lapse of some years was done by the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee regime, Marxist leaders said wondering who would invest in Bengal where criminalisation and lumpenisation was the order of the day and where there was no definite land policy.
Meanwhile, embarrassed at the continuous starvation deaths at some North Bengal tea gardens Banerjee who was currently touring the region on Tuesday told a public rally that she was prepared to take over the languishing tea gardens “if the owners cannot run it properly.”
She thundered “do not cause problems for workers. If you cannot run the gardens then tell the Government and we will take over the gardens.” Incidentally until now her Government was on a denial mode about the workers’ deaths.
About a dozen workers have died in the past one than a month due to starvation at tea gardens at Bagrakote in North Bengal.