With the Saradha chit fund scam threatening to hit the ruling Trinamool Congress hard, the Marxists have embarked on redeeming their lost political supremacy at its cost, by lining up a series of meetings, rallies and conventions throughout the State.
launching a scathing attack on the Trinamool Congress for “using money swindlers for political gain including winning elections,” State CPI(M) secretary Biman Bose on Saturday said the left Front would stage a series of rallies in Kolkata and districts from April 30.
“There is a need to tell the people about how these chit funds functioned with the help of the Trinamool Congress,” Bose the State left Front chairman said adding “Trinamool and the chit fund business have become synonymous in Bengal, leaving lakhs on the verge of complete financial ruin.”
The Front is scheduled to stage district-wise rallies on April 30. A Front meeting would be held in Kolkata on May 3 following which conventions would also be held on May 7 and 8.
In what seems to be a new left Front strategy of burrowing a hole in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s much hyped USP, ‘satatar pratik’ (a symbol of integrity), Bose wondered “why the Government is not disclosing who came with the Chief Minister in the chartered flight early this month from Delhi to Kolkata.”
Questioning the urgency behind avoiding a flight at 5 pm and taking a chartered flight an hour before, Bose said, “We will tell the people to ask questions as to who paid for the flight.” He added that Opposition leader Suryakanto Mishra had already written a letter to the Chief Secretary and Home Secretary to know about the people who were in the aircraft and who funded the flight.
laying into the Chief Minister’s “so-called reputation of being a paragon of virtue and kindness” Bose said, “No one in the world has ever seen a Chief Minister who is also a Health Minister urging the people to smoke more risking their lives in order to pay for the thousands of crores swindled by some fraudsters in connivance with her partymen.”
A thorough inquiry by the CBI would reveal how the Trinamool Congress supported the chit funds and benefited from them. “In the 1990s, Banerjee herself had written to then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh for CBI probe into Rs 100 crore chit-fund scam so why is she not ordering it today when it has crossed Rs 20,000-crore markIJ”
On the intention behind bringing a new Bill to fight chit fund menace when already a Bill was pending for Presidential assent, Bose said, “The Government is bringing a new Bill without getting the older one passed by us passed in order to give the swindlers some more time.”
There were only three Sections that were being changed in the new Bill, which could have been done through and amendment.
EOM