State finance minister Amit Mitra would hold meetings with Union finance minister P. Chidambaram in New Delhi on Thursday and Friday. The development has revived hopes of an economic bailout package from the Centre for the cash-strapped state government. Sources said that in a bid to persuade chief minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee to vote for UPA presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had assured her that her request for a moratorium on debt-repayment would be sympathetically considered.
Mr Mitra received a call from his Central counterpart on Monday who asked him to come and meet him. “When the chief minister had met him (during her recent Delhi visit), he had asked her to send the state finance minister for a routine discussion. The meetings will be held on September 6 and 7 according to his convenience because Parliament is in session,” Mr Mitra said at the Writers’ Buildings, adding that he knew Mr Chidambaram well.
Mr Mitra, however, took pains to point out that the state government was not attaching much importance to the routine meeting.
***
Mamata fails to stop sale of IPS officer’s book
AGE CORRESPONDENT
Kolkata, Sept. 3
The Mamata Banerjee government’s botched attempt at stopping the circulation of senior IPS officer Nazrul Islam’s book Musalmander Koronio (What Muslims Should Do) has proved counter-productive. After a two-day suspension of sale by the publishers, the sale of the book started on Monday morning again and within a few hours, all copies of the 100-odd page book flew off the shelves. “We never received any written order from the police or administration prohibiting the sale of the book and our lawyer Arunabha Ghosh also told me to go ahead and sell the book,” the owner of the publishing company, Mitra and Ghosh (College Street), Saitendranath Roy said.
Mr Roy was happy to see that there was a queue of eager buyers outside his shop.
“The book which would have sold only a dozen of copies will now sell into thousands only because Didi’s paranoid attempt to ban it,” Kaushik Guha, a college student said with a smile.
Mr Roy received a call late on Thursday night from the deputy commissioner of police (enforcement branch) who demanded a copy of Musalmander Koronio immediately. Mr Roy expressed his inability. “On Friday, a police team raided the shop at College Street and they closed the sale counter for three hours,” Mr Roy said.