By IANS,
Kolkata : Three years after his expulsion from the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee Saturday campaigned for the party ahead of the West Bengal te assembly polls opposing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s comments that the state has fallen far behind in education and its law and order is bad.
“Whatever the prime minister has said about education is not right. The prime minister has been fed wrong information. I am hurt… I am surprised by the prime minister’s comments as I have very good relations with him,” Chatterjee said while campaigning for two CPI-M candidates in South Kolkata.
Quoting the recent census report, he said: “The national literacy average is 74 percent, while the figure is 77.08 percent in West Bengal. Again in women’s education, the national average is 65 percent, but in our state the figure is 71 percent”.
The octogenarian leader also contradicted the Prime Minister’s remarks at election meetings Saturday that the law and order situation is bad in the state. “On the contrary, West Bengal certainly has a good law and order situation.”
Appealing to the people to return the Left Front to power in the state for the eighth consecutive time, he said: “I am no more in the party. But I have no regrets for that. I only want to see the eighth Left Front government”.
“Both Jyoti Basu and myself had the same and only wish. We both wanted to see the LF back in power. Today Jyoti Basu is no more. But I am there. I want to see the eighth LF government,” he said the former parliamentarian.
Attacking the state’s main opposition, Trinamool Congress, he said the party was bereft of any principle. “It’s sole aim was to unseat the Left Front.”
Chatterjee was expelled from the CPI-M in mid 2008 for presiding over the Lok Sabha trust vote by defying the party whip to resign from the post after the party withdrew support to the Manmohan Singh government on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.