By IANS,
Kolkata/New Delhi : A day after senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee released a report card on the Left’s three decades of “misrule” in West Bengal, the Marxists refuted the findings and, launching an attack on Mukherjee, wondered at his “doublespeak”.
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Biman Bose, speaking in Kolkata, expressed surprise over the ‘development report card’ released by Mukherjee, the West Bengal Pradesh Congress president.
“He is an experienced politician and a professor. I don’t know how he could give all wrong information about West Bengal,” Bose, the state Left Front chairman, said at a press conference here.
Citing a number of newspaper reports, he said: “I could not correlate the information Mukherjee provided Sunday and the statements he had delivered during various programmes with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee just a month ago.”
“I am sure somebody must have given him the false figures and asked him to read that out in front of the media as per the party’s instruction.”
Asked if Mukherjee was playing a “dual role” before the coming Lok Sabha polls, Bose declined to comment.
“I just can’t say he’s playing a dual role. But he should not deliver such wrong information without cross-checking it properly,” he said, adding that none of the figures provided by Mukherjee was correct.
The report titled ’30 years of Left Front rule in West Bengal: A development report card’ alleges that the CPI-M-led government failed to provide proper healthcare and education or generate employment in the state.
In New Delhi, CPI-M politburo member Brinda Karat expressed the communists’ ire over the report and at Mukherjee.
“Pranab Mukherjee appreciated the West Bengal government on Feb 2 and March 2 for undertaking development programmes. This shows his doublespeak. He now has to answer why this double standard in just one month,” she said.
Refuting the findings, Brinda Karat said: “The Congress document shows that the West Bengal government has been doing well enough on the indices of poverty, hunger and malnutrition and education. Selective statistics should not be looked and used for political motives.”
Taking on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), she said: “What is the report card of the UPA? Did they tell the people that Maharashtra has the highest number of farmer suicides. The Congress party has entirely ignored the agriculture factor and plight of farmers.”
Brinda Karat also criticised the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for writing off the Third Front.
“Both Congress and BJP have tried to scuttle the Third Front, but it finds regular mention by them. This shows their desperation for power. Their efforts of ensuring a two-party system has failed,” she added.
Referring to the BJP fielding Jaswant Singh from Darjeeling and the party aligning with the Gorka Janamukti Morcha (GJM) for the polls, Brinda Karat said: “The BJP has fielded senior leader Jaswant Singh from Darjeeling constituency on the shoulders of an outfit which is out to divide Bengal on the basis of ethnic and linguistic identity.”
She also released the CPI-M’s audio CD for the poll campaign called “Aaina”.