By IANS,
Kolkata: Taking exception to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s comment that Muslims in Gujarat were better off than those in West Bengal and his criticism of the state’s educational standards, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Sunday said it was only an election speech and did not reflect the Congress leader’s stand on the issues.
Bhattacharjee was particulary aghast over the prime minister’s comparison between the condition of the Muslims in West Bengal and the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Gujarat.
“It is very unfortunate that he is comparing the condition of minorities in our state and Gujarat. I feel not only the minorities, nobody is going to accept this,” Bhattacharjee said at a meet the press programme here.
“What he said does not behove him. I never expected to hear this from the prime minister. Be it from the socio-economic angle, or from the point of view of peace and amity, Muslims in Gujrat live amid fear and uncertainty. In contrast, West Bengal leads the country in terms of providing scholarship and loans to students from minority communities,” he said.
The prime minister made his critical observations about West Bengal Saturday while campaigning for the state assembly elections.
Saying that he was astonished by Manmohan Singh’s speech, Bhattacharjee said: “I know it was an election speech where he has to speak for his party. But when did he discover that the Left Front government is not functioning?”
The chief minister said on the many occasions he met the prime minister in Delhi in the past, “I never felt he had any such notions. Rather he was enthusiastic and interested to know about land distribution, Japanese investment, industrialisation. But yesterday, surprisingly he sang in a different tune.”
Bhattacharjee also countered the prime minister’s adverse comments about the literacy rate in the state. “Regarding literacy rate, what he said is also not right. The national literacy rate is 74 percent but in our state, the literacy rate is is 77 percent”.
“He talked about bringing back the glory of Presidency College. We have elevated Presidency College into a university. It will become a centre of excellence in near future. Whatever he said was not indicative of what he really felt,” he said.
Asked why the prime minister, who earlier used to describe him as the country’s best chief minister, has changed his stand, Bhattacharjee said the question should be put to Manmohan Singh.
“You should ask the prime minister why he has changed his mind. Ask him why he said earlier that Buddhadeb is good and now he says he is not good,” he said.
“I just don’t know myself. He is our honourable prime minster. He is doing his job, I am doing mine.”
Bhattacharjee said the prime minister did not say a single word about rising prices, or “corruption in the central government” or the Maoist activities.
The chief minister claimed Manmohan Singh was “very unhappy” about there being no progress on establishing a dedicated freight corridor between Delhi and Kolkata and Delhi and Mumbai.
“We had a pact with Japan for the freight corridors. It would have helped in industrialisation by providing for fast goods trains. No work has been done on this. He is very unhappy, totally unhappy. But how can he say such things in the political rally?”
“He was also unhappy about what happened in Singur,” Bhattacharjee said, referring to the Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee-led anti-land acquisition stir which forced Tata Motors to shift its small car Nano factory out of Singur in Hooghly district to Gujarat.