By IANS,
Kolkata: Continuing her tirade against the Congress, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee Tuesday, without naming the party, alleged it, along with the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), was trying to stall the state’s development.
She also said she was firm on her decision to rename the Indira Bhavan in satellite Salt Lake town as Nazrul Bhavan in the honour of the Bengali revolutionary poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. The building will house a museum on the poet, on whom research will be conducted.
“I will tell the persons who are hitting the streets and blocking the roads with the CPI-M to ask why there would be a Nazrul Academy, why there would be a Nazrul Islam Sarani and that one cannot stall developmental work by putting up road blocks,” Banerjee told a gathering organised by the state government here.
Banerjee had earlier announced that Indira Bhavan would be renamed Nazrul Bhavan.
The Congress, a partner with Trinamool in West Bengal’s alliance government formed just six months ago, is protesting the change.
While Congress leaders have described the decision to rename the sprawling bungalow, built in 1972 primarily to serve as a guest house for Indira Gandhi for her visits to Kolkata, as Banerjee’s “calculated move” to erase the memories of the late prime minister, the Trinamool Congress has accused the Congress of creating a “needless issue”.
The rift between the two parties widened when Banerjee said Jan 6 that “If the Congress wants to be with the CPI-M, the doors are open…I will go alone.”
The chief minister also criticised the CPI-M for not properly honouring the revolutionary poet of Bengal.
“Kazi Nazrul Islam had not got proper respect from Bengal. The CPI-M set up two party offices in the name of Nazrul Academy in Churulia (in West Bengal’s Burdwan district where the poet was born in 1899). I went there. Is it an academy? We do not want that.”
“I want India and Bangladesh to carry on research on Nazrul. I want students from foreign countries come here and do research work.”
“We want that every community shows respect to their leaders. Just keep in mind that the people who are the leaders of the country are not community leaders… Nazrul is not a community leader,” Banerjee said.
She also took a dig at her arch rival, the CPI-M, on the issue of falling prices of agricultural produce in the state.
“The CPI-M has to answer why the farmers are not getting the procurement prices of paddy. Why they had not worked out any plan on this?” she asked.