Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee lambasted chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Wednesday terming his reply letter to Union home minister P. Chidambaram as nothing but “casual” and “a show of his arrogance.” She also accused Mr Bhattacharjee of “hushing up the truth” and claimed that it was none other than “the chief minister who has himself built more than 250 harmad camps in the Jangalmahal belt, misusing administrative power.”
“The content of the chief minister’s reply letter is very causal. It is not a letter at all. Rather it is the show of his arrogance. Truth has been hushed up in his letter which aims at drifting away from the focal point of Mr Chidambaram’s letter: harmad camps in the Jangalmhal,” Ms Banerjee said.
She also took a dig at the state government over the issue which they created about receiving the Union home minister’s letter. “Whenever I receive any information, it comes to me through fax first,” she said.
The Trinamul Congress chief pointed alleged that the state government had not bothered to reply to the Centre’s letters earlier also. Justifying Mr Chidambaram’s choice of the word harmad in his leaked letter to the West Bengal government, she explained: “Harmad is a word which has become symbolic over the ages to those who unleash atrocities, go on looting spree and torture innocent people including women.”
Ms Banerjee added, “Misusing the power, the CPI(M) has been perpetrating a reign of terror over the last three decades in Bengal.” The firebrand leader also countered Mr Bhattacharjee’s argument of using the camps to shelter the homeless in the Jangalmahal. “Utensils should have been in the those camps then.”
But instead arms and ammunitions like AK-47s and landmines have been found there?” she said.
Rejecting the figure of 32 Trinamul Congress activists killed as enumerated in the chief minister’s letter, Ms Banerjee claimed: “The figure of our activists which you (Mr Bhattacharjee) provided to Mr Chidambaram has been doctored. Date-wise records and evidences prove that 246 Trinamul Congress activists were killed alone in the Jangalmahal.”