By IANS,
New Delhi : Home Minister P. Chidambaram Thursday said many places in West Bengal had become “killing fields” and he would speak to the state’s Left Front government as the Trinamool Congress had complained of atrocities by Communist cadres.
Chidambaram told reporters at Parliament House: “Many districts of West Bengal have become killing fields and we are very much concerned about this.”
Chidambaram was speaking after a meeting with Trinamool Congress chief and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is an MP from West Bengal, and Trinamool ministers Mukul Roy and Sisir Adhikari.
They met in Chidambaram’s chamber in parliament after Banerjee complained to him about the “deteriorating” law and order situation in West Bengal.
He said the Trinamool Congress “complained against atrocities on its workers by CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist) cadres.”
Chidambaram said: “This situation is not acceptable. I will speak to the West Bengal government. We are very much concerned about these killings.”
He said even on Thursday he got a report that the body of a political worker had been found. However, he did not clarify the name of the party to which the victim belonged.
The home minister said Mamata Banerjee handed over to him “a list of four districts where political killings of Trinamool and Congress workers by CPI-M cadres are taking place.”
Talking separately to reporters, Banerjee, the arch rival of the Communists in the state, said: “The Trinamool Congress wants the West Bengal government to go and we have urged the home minister to stop the joint operation (by local police and the Central Reserve Police Force) in Lalgarh.”
Security forces have been carrying out operations to flush out Maoist extremists from the Lalgarh region in West Bengal since last month. The rebels had been backing tribals there who had virtually converted the whole area into a free zone.
Banerjee said: “Atrocities were being committed in Lalgarh in the name of Maoists…We want justice, we want the political murderers to be arrested.”
The railway minister asserted that as many as 50 Trinamool Congress workers had been killed in two months in West Bengal.
The CPI-M, however, alleged that the Trinamool was providing shelter to Maoists and fomenting extremist violence, thus posing a “grave threat to the entire nation”.
Its senior politburo member Sitaram Yechury alleged that the Maoists were “operating under the banner of the organisations set up by the Trinamool Congress.”
He said: “By giving shelter to Maoists, the Trinamool Congress is posing a grave threat to the entire nation.”
“Why is the Trinamool hesitating to demarcate themselves from the Maoists? They are still using the Maoists for political purposes. This will continue till the 2011 (assembly) elections (in the state).”