ADDRESSING an evening rally at Rani Rashmoni Road in the Esplanade area of Kolkata on January 16, the West Bengal Left Front leadership said that the constant plotting of the Trinamul Congress-BJP alliance in Bengal to destabilise the political situation would be foiled by the democratic-minded people of the state. The rally was held as part of the "Save Democracy" campaign run by the Left Front between January 13 and 24, and also to protest against the dastardly killing of the CPI(M)’s South 24 Parganas district committee member, Comrade Kalipada Haldar, a few days back.

In his brief but important address, state CPI(M) secretary of the CPI (M), Anil Biswas said the rampant violence unleashed on the peace-loving people of the state by the Trinamul Congress-BJP alliance represented a calculated attempt at bringing about chaos in the period before of the assembly elections.

The opposition alliance in Bengal, Biswas pointed out, had adopted a twin strategy to counter, if they could, the popularity of the Left Front government. First, there is a constant hue-and-cry about the impending necessity of imposing article 356 in the state. This is calculated to have the effect of stifling the normal flow of democratic activities on the eve of the polls. Second, there is a desperate ongoing attempt to cobble together a kind of grand alliance (mahajote) in the state with the participation of the Trinamul Congress, the Pradesh Congress, and the BJP. Both attempts would land up being notable failures, Biswas declared.

With the BJP having problems in tackling the question of keeping the NDA "flock" together, its state unit has to put up with a divided house where the Trinamul Congress keeps poaching. Furthermore, the BJP leadership has to reckon with the immutable fact that in the more than 90 instances when the concerned article had been invoked to topple a government, the dismissed political regimes had managed a big come-back in the polls not less than 69 times. The fact that some of the NDA partners would quit the front by citing the instance of imposition of article 356 against a democratically elected government as the "last straw" is another imponderable the all-India BJP and NDA leadership will have to tackle.

"As far as the grand alliance is concerned," declared Biswas, "the Pradesh Congress is never unaware of the fact that if they do indulge in this sort of gamesmanship, whatever little support base they have in the state will quickly wither away." The noises hitherto emerging from the Pradesh Congress headquarters was hardly the kind that would assure the Trinamul Congress of the viability of forming any mahajote in the foreseeable future.

Mourning the killing of Comrade Kalipada Haldar, Anil Biswas said that by doing away with a communist party leader who virtually had no enemies, the aim was to create a sense of fear among the people that no one would be allowed to consider himself or herself safe till a change was brought about in the political situation in the state.

The tactic, Biswas pointed out, was not exactly anything new: earlier, the Congress had killed such senior Party functionaries as Comrades Santosh Bhattacharyya of Murshidabad and Jiban Maiti of Howrah in the terror-filled decade of the 1970s.

Over the last seven years, Anil Biswas recalled, such senior district-level leaders of the CPI(M) as Comrades Allah Rakhah and Manab Saha of Murshidabad, and Comrade Pranesh Pal of Jalpaiguri had been brutally done to death for the sake of spreading panic among the people. And no less than 19 zonal committee members of the Party, too, had been killed by the goons of the Trinamul-BJP alliance in the state over the same period of time.

The people of Bengal, Biswas declared, ‘"will come forward and foil every attempt made at destabilising the state and at stopping in the tracks the important work of pro-people development going on." The response to the violence being unleashed by the Trinamul Congress-BJP combine must not be counter-violence, but a stepping up of the democratic movement throughout the state, and a conscious effort by the CPI(M) and the Left Front to further deepen and widen mass contact. Biswas said there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the politically-conscious people of Bengal "shall ensure the onward march of the Left Front in the months and years to come."

The meeting was also addressed by Satya Bhattacharyya of the CPI, Naren De of the Forward Bloc, Subhas Basu of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Moni Pal of the Socialist Party and by Santimoy Bhattacharyya and Kanti Ganguly of the South 24 Parganas unit of the CPI(M). The rally, which was presided over by Prasanta Kumar Sur of the CPI(M) also passed a resolution condemning the killing of Comrade Kalipada Haldar. (INN)