CM's partymen attacking ally workers

Cong ‘unhappy’ with TMC

Top Cong Leaders Vent Anger On Trinamool’s Inaction

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

Kolkata: Malda Congress MP and State Youth Congress president Mausam Noor’s plan to lead a “silent rally” from Hazra to Gandhi Statue in Mayo Road on Friday against Trinamool’s frequent attack on her partymen has an implicit political connotation. The rally will be in Kolkata South Lok Sabha constituency where by-elections are slated on November 30. The choice of place has already generated rumblings in Trinamool Congress ranks. 
    “Across the state, Congress party workers are being attacked by Trinamool supporters. Police are playing a partisan role. False cases are being slapped against our workers. We informed everyone, even to the Trinamool high command, about the incidents, but to no avail. We want to send across a strong message. While we respect the alliance, this can’t go on unabated,” Noor said. 
    On November 20, Congress workers will assemble for a conference on Panchayati Raj, which will be attended by union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and general secretary Shakeel Ahmed. The crucial decision of whether Congress will go alone in the forthcoming civic polls, scheduled in 2013, will hinge on the meeting. State Congress president and MP Pradeep Bhattacharya and minister Manas Bhunia have already told workers in Malda and West Midnapore that Congress will go alone in these districts. Bhattacharya on Wednesday told media persons, “We are not speaking against the government. But trying to strengthen it,” adding they’d want the government to delegate more powers to the gram samsads and panchayats instead of the executive. 
    The government’s purported decision to shift the AIIMS-like hospital from its proposed site in Raigunj to Kalyani had also not gone down well with the ally. “The hospital in North Bengal would have fulfilled the aspirations of a lot of people. The local MP has every right to highlight the people’s cause. It is not about attacking the government but to highlight a genuine issue,” Ahmed said. It is not only about Congress nursing a grudge. Trinamool isn’t happy either with some actions of the state Congress. Subhendu Adhikari, Trinamool’s youth wing president, alleged, “They are so vocal about reported attacks on their partymen but have remained surprisingly silent on the murders of Trinamool workers in Jangalmahal. A section of Congress is only bent on disrupting the alliance. Or why they will induct into the party a person who’d fired at Mamata Banerjee, then an opposition leader?” 
    The later is a simmering flashpoint in the lower levels. In 1995, a former CITU worker Md Mukhtar had reportedly fired at a car being driven by the now speaker Biman Banerjee with Mamata in it at Gardenreach’s Bichalighat. Mukhtar was inducted into Congress’s trade union wing INTUC late October.