Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee once again admitted that some CPI(M) leaders and workers had committed mistakes creating a distance between the people and the ruling party. A section of the partymen and leaders through their arrogance and anti-people moves have alienated people in some areas in the state, Mr Bhattacharjee said.
“We have to bow our heads and go to the people who have not taken such behaviour lightly,” the chief minister said at a public meeting organised by the Left Front in North 24 Parganas district.
“We have to give up the habit of thinking ourselves as the king and the people as our subjects,” Mr Bhattacharjee said, adding that “any financial corruption” is also a thing to be dispensed with.
Significantly, while the chief minister’s prescriptions of “do’s and don’ts” to party ranks in a Left Front rally may come as a bit surprising to the district leadership of North 24 Parganas but Mr Bhattacharjee’s bid to regain the confidence of the people was evident when he gave a warning to party leaders “not to get associated with anti-socials and earn a bad name for the party.”
Clearly red-faced over the back-to-back poll debacles in this faction-ridden district, Mr Bhattacharjee said, “We have asked such partymen to leave.”
It may be recalled that the CPI(M) recently demoted two strongmen in this district — Kalyan Mukherjee and Ranjit Das — from all the party positions.
Gunning for both the Congress and Trinamul Congress, Mr Bhattacharjee said that while the Congress was to be blamed for all the state’s past ills, the latter was a party of irresponsible people bent on taking the state on the path of anarchy. “They are talking about paribartan (change). The only change that they can bring about is taking the state backwards instead of on the path of development,” Mr Bhattacharjee said.
Taking a dig at Trinamul Congress chief Ms Banerjee, he said: “She is lying. Industry cannot be set up by lying. It does not require hard work to lie but it needs hard work to set up industry.”
Charging the Trinamul Congress for opposing industry, chief minister Buddhadeb said, “It will not deter us. We will certainly listen to what the Opposition has to say but we will not stop the drive for setting up more industries.”