By IANS,
Kolkata : With Rabindra Sangeet and other age-old popular Bengali songs playing in the background, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Sunday led a huge, colourful procession covering various parts the city to celebrate the first anniversary of the historic victory of her Trinamool Congress in the assembly polls.
The triumph of the Trinamool Congress-Congress-Socialist Unity Centre of India(Communist) alliance on this day last year had brought to an end the 34-year rule of the Left Front. Banerjee and her ministry was sworn in on May 20.
Cultural troupes performed on the roads and on well-decorated lorries and trucks, Trinamool workers held aloft party flags and carried banners reading Ma-Mati Manush dhanyabad (Thanks to mother, soil and people -Banerjee’s slogan), women wore sarees with the party’s symbol twin flowers, as the procession traversed various roads starting from south Kolkata’s Hazra and terminated at Rajabazar.
Adding colour to the procession were 13 tableaux, dedicated to personalities like nobel laureate Rabindranth Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Kazi Nazrul Islam, B.R. Ambedkar and highlighting the government’s success in various fields.
As the procession reached Rajabazar, Banerjee took the mike criticising the erstwhile Left Front government for “non-performance” and claimed that her government had taken rapid strides in fulfilling its election pledges.
“We are trying our best. People in the hills and the junglemahal (forested stretches covering Maoist-hit West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura districts) are now leaving in peace. We are trying to usher in development on all fronts,” she said.