Launching a blistering attack on the central government and making it clear that she is ready for a showdown against it on a range of issues , India's West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee yesterday said the government was “dead”, the “body” had “decomposed” and it needed only to be cremated.
The immediate provocations are results of the major reshuffling of the Cabinet, the switchover to digitisation of television network and the snowballing labour trouble at Haldia port.
Also, for the first time, Banerjee extended support to anti-graft activist Anna Hazare's demand for immediate dissolution of Parliament.
Banerjee dared the centre to stop telecast to viewers in the city who haven't switched over to digitisation. “They have to keep the analog option open till everybody switches over to digitisation. You cannot resort to arm-twisting while being in the government in Delhi. If there is a blackout, we will ensure that the protests on the streets of greater Kolkata spread to the whole country,” the chief minister warned at a media conference in the state secretariat.
She complained Multiple System Operators (MSOs) are being threatened to ensure they switch over to the new digitised system.
The state urban development minister, Firhad Hakim, had earlier met MSOs and cable operators along with chief secretary Sanjay Mitra and told them to keep the analog system on. But since this amounted to flouting the central directive, the chief secretary had at one point of time reportedly declared he won’t be a party to the
arrangement.
At the end of the chaotic meeting, the chief minister also discussed the issue with select MSOs and cable operators.
The state government is likely to ask the information and broadcasting ministry to extend the deadline by another month. Criticising the centre for letting foreign manufacturers do brisk and huge business in set top boxes, she said: “They have forced us to open our mouth. Why didn't they ensure availability of set top boxes or distribute them free? This is a big matter.”
For the first time Banerjee joined issue with Anna Hazare whom she had, so far, been scrupulously avoiding. She had even declined to share the platform with Hazare at an award ceremony of a prominent television channel last November. But today she supported his demand for dissolution of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and a fresh poll.
Terming the UPA government as a minority one, chief minister Banerjee said: “It's a one party government. Apart from some who are like fireflies there is nobody else. Mulayam Singh Yadav or Mayawati didn't join the government. Let them prove their majority on the floor of the House. Why should we move a motion? Let them do it suo moto."
On the Cabinet reshuffle and inclusion of three ministers from Bengal, she said: “It is their goat, their fish, their branch. Let them cut it as they please.” She also spewed venom on a section of the media houses which, according to her, instead of exposing the “deals made by the UPA-government" was supporting it along with big business.
At one point she threatened she would invoke the Information Act, if “such media houses” distorted her words.
Banerjee accused the centre of using the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Income Tax department and the Enforcement Directorate to settle political scores and browbeat others into surrender.
Commenting on the ongoing labour trouble at Haldia port, Banerjee said the Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) had ganged up to blow the incident out of proportion and spread a canard against the Trinamul-government. "Fabricated versions are being dished out on the situation at Haldia," she charged.
The CPI-M demanded centre's intervention, removal of the chairman of Kolkata Port Trust and a high-level inquiry into the ongoing troubles in Haldia dock complex. The party has also raised questions on allegations of deals struck by vested interests leading to loss to the KoPT's revenue.
Leader of the opposition, Dr Suryakanta Mishra said: “We want to know whose interest is being safeguarded in the Haldia dock or if any deal has been struck.” PCC president Pradip Bhattacharya said the chief minister should stop using intemperate language against the Centre and instead try to “bring West Bengal out of the ICU (intensive care unit) that it's in”.
As if to rub salt into Congress’ injuries the Trinamul made it clear that it would reward Congress Member of Legislative Assembly Krishnendu Choudhury with a berth in the state Cabinet if he decided to join the party. Industry minister Partha Chatterjee said : “He will be welcomed both in the party and the government if he decides to quit the Congress.”
The new Union minister from Bengal, AH Khan Choudhury, added one more twist to the showdown between the Trinamul supremo and the Centre when he iterated that the UPA-government would set up All India Institute of Medical Sciences type hospital at Raiganj which the chief minister had been doggedly opposing. Choudhury, Union minister of state for health said: “If necessary land will be bought for building the hospital at Raiganj."
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