In an apparent precursor to its future plans of making the Central Government’s “sweeping privatisation” exercise as one of its main electoral planks in the next year’s Assembly elections the ruling Trinamool Congress on Tuesday launched campaigns throughout Bengal against the BJP demanding immediate roll back of what its leaders called “a conspiracy to privatise the Indian Railways.”
Senior party leaders including MP Mala Roy, Firhad Hakim led hundreds of slogan shouting demonstrators at various places of Kolkata including Khidderpore, Tollygunge and Behala. The district and block units protested at Purulia, Hooghly, Birbhum, Malda and other parts of the State.
“This BJP Government has a defined policy of dividing India along religious lines and taking advantage of a divided electorate create a dictatorship of the capitalist forces … India will henceforward be divided into a capitalist India and poor man’s Bharat where the capitalists will rule through their puppets in the BJP,” Hakim a senior Minister in the Mamata Cabinet said.
In what looked like statements taken directly out of the Left leaders’ mouths he said “the privatization goes hand in hand and through privatization of Railways and other profit-making institutions this Government will mortgage the country into the hands of Indian and foreign capitalist powers.”
Demanding immediate rollback of the decision to run 159 private trains throughout India Roy, the South Kolkata MP said the “As has been the practice Mamata always takes up a cause while other parties follow it. In this case too we have launched this movement … we will not let a sale-out of the public wealth like this.”
The Left and Congress too staged a joint demonstration at down town Park Street demanding a withdrawal of the decision. “India does not belong to the BJP, neither it belongs to the exploiters… it belongs to the people in general particularly, the toiling mass whose sweat and toil have gone into making of what Indian Railways is today. So a handful of leaders in the Centre cannot take this important decision and it has to be taken back,” said CPI(M) politburo member Biman Bose.
Congress MP Pradip Bhattacharya too attacked the Centre for taking “arbitrary decisions by-passing the people’s representatives and by taking advantage of the handicap that the opposition suffers from during the corona period. The Congress and the Left firmly demands its roll back.”
The Left and the Congress have also decided to build up a joint movement against the decision to disinvest Coal India, the leaders nsaid. “How can a PSU which has registered a profit of Rs 27,000 crore last year be sold at one go … there is larger conspiracy behind what the BJP is doing and they will have to repent for it in future,” said Forward Bloc leader Naren Dey.