In what could sound alarm bells for the once disciplined CPI(M) ahead of the general elections, former State Minister and staunch Buddhadeb Bhattacahrjee-baiter Abdul Rezzak Mollah on Sunday announced formation of a separate platform that “would fight the 2016 Assembly elections separately in order to usher in a new age in Bengal.”
The Marxist oddball who had been with the party for the past 44 years had been critical of former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s style of functioning and privately holds him responsible for the CPI(M)’s denying him an entry into the State secretariat the highest decision-making body of the State unit.
Mollah who had earlier gone on record saying the left had failed to realise the dreams of the Dalits and minorities in the State insisted his new outfit in 2016 would project a Dalit Chief Minister with a Muslim deputy.
“I am not seceding from the CPI(M) and have just floated a platform for social work,” he said adding however that in 2016 “we will fight elections separately in order to bring a complete transformation in the system.”
On his formation of Association of Dalits and Muslims he said, “I am still in the CPI(M) and will quit the party when I will form a new outfit.” On whether his sole agenda was causing harm to the left Front Mollah the tallest and most charismatic Muslim face of the CPI(M) in the State said, “I have openly criticised the Trinamool Government’s policies and will fight against their oppression as they have only made the condition of the State worse.”
Mollah who has reportedly rejected a parliamentary seat offered to him by the CPI(M) in the coming elections would however campaign for the left Front in the polls and “would take the final decision only in 2016.” He added “I am still in the CPI(M) and still in the left Front.”
Curiously the maverick Marxist who said, “Jyoti Basu was a great politician who knew the art of accommodating everyone’s opinions” unlike those at the helm today tended to make a rapprochement more difficult by introducing some faces known for playing minority politics in the State in his new platform.
Apart from Mollah the pitch was queered further by another rebel leader laxman Seth of the Nandigram fame who also attended the Sunday’s meeting.
Seth a three-time Marxist MP and alleged architect of Nandigram crisis, against whom the CPI(M) was currently conducting investigative proceedings said “the party is functioning in bureaucratic manner making it difficult for the parallel opinions to be heard.”
Seth a former State Committee member who was banished from the committee after Nandigram firing reportedly at the behest of Bhattacharjee said instead of democratic centralism the party was following the policy of “bureaucratic centralism which will spell doom for the left movement in Bengal.”