By IANS,
Kolkata : Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee Thursday slammed the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for increasing the prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas.
The Left parties that support the government from outside also attracted her ire.
“The UPA government has failed to discover oil fields in the country. There are lot of alternative options open by which the government could tackle the oil price rise issue. I also urged the government to initiate an austerity drive and immediately reduce the luxuries provided to MPs,” Banerjee told a press conference here.
She said: “The Left parties only believe in give and take politics. If they are honest enough they should come out of the alliance (to protest the price rise). The CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist) has been the master voice in the UPA government and now if they say they didn’t know anything about the decision, the people will not believe that.”
She said the Trinamool Congress had called a 12-hour shutdown in West Bengal Friday to protest the decision of the Congress-led UPA government to hike oil prices.
Countering Banerjee’s statement, Left Front chairman and CPI-M state general secretary Biman Bose said the Friday shutdown was of no consequence.
“I ask them (Trinamool Congress) to withdraw the shutdown call,” he said.
Speaking about Thursday’s shutdown called by the West Bengal’s ruling Left Front, Bose said: “It was a successful general strike and there was no untoward incident reported in any part of the state. I thank people for spontaneously participating in it.”