Former chief minister and CPI(M) politburo member Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Sunday acknowledged that some of the CPI(M) leaders had started considering themselves masters of the people. “We must do some self-criticism. I want to say it unambiguously that in Arambag some of our leaders made terrible mistakes. They started behaving like masters of the people which people didn’t like. People do not want someone to lord over them,” Mr Bhattacharjee said. He was clearly referring to expelled CPI(M) leader Anil Basu.
Mr Bhattacharjee also confessed that his party had committed another “major mistake” by gagging the voice of the Opposition. “The ground which we have lost if you want to regain it then you will have to treat people as your friends. You will have to go to the people after correcting your mistakes and ensuring that we do not repeat them,” said Mr Bhattacharjee while addressing a CPI(M) workers’ conference at Rabindra Bhavan in Hooghly’s Arambag. Party insiders revealed that Mr Basu’s loyalists were attending the meeting too.
Mr Bhattacharjee also trained guns at the Mamata Banerjee government for its repeated attempts to bar the Opposition from holding political programmes. “It was a dangerous mistake on our part in not allowing the Opposition to speak during our rule,” he confessed candidly.
His comments came in wake of the Mamata Banerjee government’s denial of permission to his meetings recently. In case of Rabindra Bhavan too, the administration had initially barred him to address the programme on the pretext of law and order problem but later relented in the wake of huge criticism.