People's Democracy

LF To Concentrate On Group Meetings

B Prasant

WEST Bengal Left Front has resolved to hold small group meetings in rural and urban areas as the Lok Sabha polls approach.  By doing this, the LF leadership believes, the Left Front would be able make a deep impact amongst the populace while taking its political message in their midst. The meeting held on March 8 was presided over by LF chairman, Biman Basu.

The Left Front workers have been exhorted upon to arrange baithak meetings in the villages and ward-based meetings in the urban centres.  Gate meetings will be organised before factories and production units.  The smaller meetings will be accompanied by larger rallies.

The Left Front has almost finalised organising LF coordination committees in almost all the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha constituencies.  By March 15 the work of putting together the coordination committees will have been completed while by April 6 the work of organising booth committees will be finalised. The house-to-house campaign work is under way through the booth committees that have already been formed.

The LF meetings and rallies will abide by the guidelines set by the State Pollution Control Board.  On the days when the restrictions will be in force, as during the examinations, box speakers will be used in meetings that will be held in restricted and closed spaces.

In the meanwhile, general body meetings of LF workers have been held for quite some time now both centrally and in Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha constituencies.  The Left Front’s “Election Appeal to the people” shall be published soon, Biman Basu stated.

Biman Basu emphasised the links that the People’s War Group (PWG) continues to have with the Trinamul Congress-BJP alliance in Bengal.  He drew the attention of the media to the fact that not a single Trinamul Congress, BJP, and Pradesh Congress worker has been ever targeted by the PWG-Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) combine while many CPI(M) workers were targeted and brutally assassinated by these naxalite goons.

Biman Basu believes that the existing political understanding that exists between the Jharkhandis and the MCC-PWG groups is being utilised by the Trinamul-BJP to put up candidates in west Midnapore and elsewhere.

Earlier both state secretary of the CPI(M) Anil Biswas and Biman Basu stressed that the PWG-MCC menace would be politically countered in the state.  The “vote boycott” slogan, which in any case was not cutting ice with the electorate of Midnapore, would go to strengthen the hand of the BJP/NDA, believes the Bengal Left Front.  Those who shun the democratic path, like the ultras do, should not speak about “strengthening democracy,” said Basu.

Elsewhere, speaking to media persons, Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee noted that there was developing a close understanding between PWG-MCC and Trinamul-BJP in Bengal.  The former, now led by a man from Andhra Pradesh, has started to lose whatever little base they had and are not able to organise meetings any longer in the pockets of west Midnapore where they try to be “active” mostly by killing CPI(M) workers.