The Trinamool Congress has refused to react to the CPI(M)’s decision to stay out of the coordination committee of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
TMC national general secretary Abishek Banerjee on Monday said that decision taken by the Marxist outfit was its own and need not be commented on by his party.
“We as a party have tried to bring all the like-minded forces together to fight the BJP … we will do all possible things to reach our goal … as per the CPI(M) … if they have decided to remain out of the coordination committee then they will have to explain it … it is completely on them to take decision on this … so I have nothing to say about this,” Banerjee said in a guarded language.
Earlier the CPI(M) had made it clear that they would stay out of the INDIA coordination committee but would remain a part of the anti-BJP coalition formed by national and state parties for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The decision was taken by the party’s politburo. Though there was a view that the Bengal leaders did not want the party to be in a committee where Abhishek Banerjee was a member CPI(M) State secretary and politburo member Md Salim on Monday said that the decision was not related to Banerjee’s inclusion in the committee.
Rather he said, “our politburo has rightly visualized the issue … we have found that there is not much relevance of the coordination committee … as seat-sharing has to be discussed at the State level and not nationally being or not being in the coordination committee does not matter … the decision to remain out of it has no relation with anything else.” When asked to comment about CPI leader D Raja’s presence in the committee Salim said, “it is for the CPI and D Raja to explain … the CPI(M) is not responsible for that.”
According to reports the CPI(M) politburo’s decision to remain out of the committee comes in the wake of a vehement protest within the party particularly from Bengal where the Left has witnessed good resurgence in the past little more than a year or so coming closer to the BJP to claim the principal opposition party status — at least vote percentage wise.
Most of the district committees had objected to being openly seen with Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee — against whose party the Marxists had been engaged in a fierce turf war in the State.
“Our men are being murdered, there houses are looted, women raped, lands grabbed forcibly and our local leaders are threatened with false ganja cases to join the TMC every day … the TMC has brought the BJP in Bengal by holding its hands … they have helped BJP by driving away the Left workers from the villages … our grassroots workers and our supporters in the villages are a party to the day-to-day fight which the national leadership has to understand if they want to see a revival of the party in Bengal,” said a CPIM State committee member.
Another former CPI(M) MP said that “Mamata Banerjee has entered the INDIA alliance to spoil it from within … she is working as Narendra Modi’s agent there in lieu of being relieved from the corruption cases being handled by CBI and ED … most BJP leaders in Bengal including its State president Sukanta Majumdar, Opposition Leader, MP Locket Chatterjee and many others are former TMC men … then you have Arjun Singh, Mukul Roy, Rajib Banerjee and others who keep on shuttling between the two parties … so we see the BJP and the TMC as the two sides of the same coin … we cannot and should share platforms with them …”
Explaining the CPI(M)’s joining the INDIA alliance where the TMC too was a member he said, “it was on a broader national issue of throwing out BJP from power … in Bengal not a single inch of land will be left either to the BJP or the TMC.”