Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Sunday gave a repartee to her arch-rival Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s recent call to his party ranks: “Left Front or death.”
Criticising the chief minister’s choice of words, the Trinamul Congress chief instead asked her partymen to choose between “development” and the “removal of the Marxist party from Bengal.”
“What kind of a chief minister is he who tells the people to choose between the Left Front and death? Does he have any respect for democracy? We say, the choice is between development or the removal of the CPI(M),” she said at the Utsav Maidan at Raina in Burdwan. Ms Banerjee was addressing a massive public rally there to protest the killing of two Trinamul Congress workers in the police firing on December 1.
At a Left Front meeting on December 30, Mr Bhattacharjee had said that the choice before the people of the state was “Left Front or death.”
Taking pot-shot at the chief minister, Ms Banerjee said: “I wonder how people of any other state would have reacted had their chief minister used this loaded language.”
Going a step further, Ms Banerjee invited the harmads (armed goons) of the ruling party to an “unarmed battle” with her party activists to prove their strength. Ms Banerjee said, “Let them fight us without the guns and the police help. I want to see who is stronger: the CPI(M) harmads or the dedicated Trinamul activists.”
Lashing out at the CPI(M)-led government for the police-firing, Ms Banerjee said: “What prompted the police to open firing?” She gave the state government an ultimatum to arrest officer-in-charge of the Raina police station, Sadhan Banerjee within 15 days. “If they fail, we will gherao the SP office,” she said.