Clearly with an eye on the panchayat elections, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday intensified her offensive against the Centre, claiming that her government was not duty-bound to repay the loan which the previous Left Front government had taken. “Why should we shoulder the burden of the CPI(M)’s debts? If the Centre wants to recover the loans, it should do so by raising money by disposing off the CPI(M) party offices because it was the CPI(M) which had taken the loan. The CPI(M) has amassed property worth crores and the Centre should recover its debt by selling off those assets. Why should it take the money of the people of West Bengal?” she asked. Claiming that she was tolerating a lot, she warned the Centre that if she was pushed too far, her party would take its battle to Delhi’s Red Fort. Ms Banerjee was addressing a party rally at Metro Channel in the city.
Angered by the persistent refusal of the Centre to grant her a moratorium on interest payment for three years on a loan of `2 lakh crore, Ms Banerjee accused it of meting out step-motherly treatment to the state. Today, she added a new dimension to her diatribe against the Centre. “The Centre takes away `40,000 crore in sales tax, income tax, customs duty, excise duty, service tax et al. It gives back roughly `18,500 crore to the state. However, it takes away another `26,000 crore as interest payment on debt. This cannot go on,” she said.
Kickstarting the campaign for the three-tier panchayat polls due in May, the chief minister made it clear that her party Trinamul Congress would target both the Congress-led UPA government and the opposition Left Front. She asked her party workers to launch an uninterrupted campaign against the Centre’s anti-people policies. She asked them to start a door-to-door campaign making people aware about the issues on which her party Trinamul Congress severed ties with the UPA.