CPM lashes out at WB Governor
The party issues a statement saying Gandhi had “out-stepped the Constitutional limit” of his office, report Tanmay Chatterjee & Saroj Nagi.
The state CPM as well as the party politburo condemned West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi on Saturday for his statement on “recapturing” of villages by CPM cadres in Nandigram as “totally unlawful and unacceptable”.
The party issued a statement saying Gandhi had “out-stepped the Constitutional limit” of his office and accused him of “emboldening the forces determined to destabilise peace and democracy in the state in an undemocratic manner”. The Governor had expressed concern over the developments in Nandigram on Friday. Agreeing with home secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy’s description of Nandigram as “a war zone”, Gandhi had said, “No government or society can allow a war zone to exist without an immediate and effective action”.
“I find it equally unacceptable that while Nandigram has been ingressed with ease by armed people on the one hand, political and non-political persons trying to reach it have been violently obstructed,” Gandhi said. The way Medha Patkar and her associates were treated on Thursday evening was also “against all norms of civilised political behaviour”, he added.
The CPM state unit called an emergency meeting at the Alimuddin Street secretariat, soon after a section of Left Front partners and the intelligentsia came out in support of the governor, where the decision to condemn Gandhi was taken in presence of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Interestingly, party patriarch Jyoti Basu, who had initially criticised the government but toed the party line on Friday, was conspicuous by his absence.
While the CPM politburo described Gandhi’s remarks as “surprising” and “uncalled for”, the state unit issued a statement saying CPM is pained with the press release issued from Raj Bhawan as it has once again out-stepped the Constitutional limit of the highest order of the state.
“The content of the statement makes it clear that this is not
the role expected from the office of the Governor under the Constitution,’’ the Politburo statement said.
CPM state secretary Biman Bose said that Gandhi was partial towards the Opposition and did not take into account the plight of CPM supporters at Nandigram, who “were evicted from their homes by goons hired by the “Trinamul –Maoist combine”.