TMC govt suffering from intolerance: Buddhadeb

Former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Sunday said the Trinamool Congress-led government was suffering from a sense of political intolerance.

"They cannot tolerate political parties like the CPI-M and that is why they are divesting powers of the CPI-M-controlled zilla parishads to district magistrates," he told a Bengali news channel.

He claimed that the TMC government was attacking newspapers and TV channels which is "another instance of political intolerance".

Asked if he considers it to be fascism, he said he did not think so, but felt they were trying to grab power of the Left parties in the panchayat by unseating them.

He said the upcoming party congress at Kozhikode would deliberate on the reasons for the party's defeat in West Bengal Assembly election after 34 years.

"We will analyse why we were defeated. Where the mistake was in land acquisition for industry and in the running of the panchayat."

Defending the need for industrialisation, he said the progress cannot come on the basis of agriculture. We have to take lessons from land acquisition at Singur and also in dealing with the Nandigram episode.

First Published: Apr 01, 2012 21:48 IST