Giving a wake-up call to its ranks, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, on the day of completion of 33 years of Left Front’s power in Bengal, said that the party will have to do an introspection to do a turnaround within the time span left before the Assembly polls in 2011.
Having realised from the back-to-back electoral setbacks that not only its rural but the urban vote banks as well and also that the minorities had deserted them, Mr Bhattacharjee has called upon its ranks to go to its basic mantra: back to the poor.
Acknowledging some “mistakes” were committed in their bid to bring “development”, particularly in the policy of land acquisition for industry, the chief minister claimed that no other state has implemented land reforms to the extent which Bengal has. “One-fifth of the total land distributed as surplus land in the country has been in West Bengal alone,” Mr Bhattacharjee said.
Scoffing at the Trinamul Congress slogan for poriborton (change), chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee asked whether Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee wanted to change all the good works done by the Left Front in the past 33 years in the state? “Through land reforms we have distributed more than 11 lakh acres of land among the landless poor. Does she wants to return the land to the landlords? he asked.
Mr Bhattacharjee claimed that even the ruling CPI(M) was also bringing change. “We are mending our ways, changing our style and correcting our mistakes to present a new look to the Left Front in the coming year,” Mr Bhattacharjee said.
In what seemed as being unfazed by the constant demand of the Trinamul Congress chief for early Assembly polls, the chief minister made it clear that his government will not only complete its tenure but will use the remaining one year for a turnaround.