While Rahul Gandhi slams, the CPI(M) smiles? Yes, this seems to be so now in the political scenario in Bengal.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s public speech in which he had bantered the Communist ideology as “anachronistic and outdated” may have angered the Alimuddin Street bosses, but what he told his party leaders in a closed door meeting at the Congress office, has come as music to their ears.
Mr Gandhi’s assertion that the party would never accept “an alliance at the cost of its self-respect” has rekindled the CPI(M) hope that the Congress-Trinamul Congress tie up may collapse before the Assembly polls.
“The CPI(M) must be defeated through the alliance, but not at the cost of the Congress’s self-respect),” a Bengal Congress leader quoted Rahul as saying during an interaction with state unit leaders. “The party’s self-respect is non-negotiable,” added Mr Gandhi.
Obviously, this “inner-voice” of Mr Gandhi has come as a sort of morale booster to the demoralised CPI(M) mandarins who are still pinning hopes on the tactics of driving a wedge between the alliance to sail through the Assembly polls in 2011. “Although the prospect of the party has appeared to be bad, but not so grim as the Opposition (read the Trinamul Congress) has been trying to paint. People have also started feeling the heat in places where the Trinamul Congress or the alliance have won to rule,” said party leader Abdur Rezzak Mollah.