Mamata meets PM to discuss Bengal
Railway minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here on Wednesday evening to draw his attention to law and order situation in West Bengal as also the situation in Lalgarh where, she has already declared, she would be holding a party rally on August 9.
While Ms Banerjee has held several meetings in the past with Union home minister P. Chidambaram on the law and order situation in her state, on Wednesday she chose to knock at the PM’s door perhaps because she is not being allowed to hold a rally in Lalgarh on August 9. The CPI-M has placed a road-block in Didi’s way by not granting her party permission to hold a rally there. Ms Banerjee, however, has already declared her intention to go ahead with her proposed rally.
Interestingly, the meeting happened on a day when Ms Banerjee’s ministry wrote to the home ministry seeking a CBI probe into the Uttar Banga-Vananchal Express collision at Sainthia in West Bengal on July 19.
During her meeting with the PM, Ms Banerjee reportedly discussed railway safety issues in the wake of the July 19 accident as well as the one involving the Gyaneswari Express which also happened in West Bengal.
While in the case of Gyaneswari Express, Ms Banerjee had claimed “sabotage”, in the case of the Sainthia train collision, the minister has claimed “conspiracy”. The GyaneswariExpress mishap is already being probed by the CBI.
Ms Banerjee, who is rarely in the Capital as she is busy with her state’s politics, is also reported to have drawn the PM’s attention to the fact that Section 144 of the CrPc has been in force in the Lalgarh area for nearly a year now.
While Ms Banerjee has declared that she will go to the Jungalmahal area of Lalgarh “to establish the people’s democratic rights”, WB chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has already said in the state Assembly that his government would not allow the risk of holding such a rally.
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