Hours before Maoist-backed activists held the Bhubaneswar-originating Rajdhani Express hostage inside West Bengal near the Jharkhand border, an angry Mamata Banerjee today demanded the anti-Maoist operations in her state should be stopped. And that the Union government prepare the ground for imposing President’s Rule.
After a meeting with her cabinet colleague, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, she said: “The joint operations by the central and the state forces are a mockery of democracy. It is a total failure. While the operation is going on, a police officer got abducted. Now in the name of the joint operation, gun-toting CPI(M) goons are reclaiming their party offices.”
Banerjee, the railway minister, also advocated deploying the army in the offensive against the Naxals, even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has ruled out use of armed forces in anti-Naxal operations. Banerjee wants Chidambaram to deploy armed forces to look out for illegal arms and use of the state police’s weapons by the CPI(M).
She also reiterated her old demand that the Centre should first advise the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government in Bengal through Article 355 of the Constitution (which empowers the Centre, in certain circumstances, to issue directives to states), “and if they don’t behave, the Centre should dismiss the government and impose President’s Rule.”
Banerjee, accompanied by her party junior and leader of the opposition in the state assembly, Partha Chatterjee, today took the wives of two abducted police constables to the home minister.
She also presented some video CDs to show the alleged atrocities of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. Chatterjee alleged, “in the CDs we have shown how CPI(M) leaders are asking their cadres to kill Trinamool supporters.”
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Banerjee’s meeting with Chidambaram comes after two recent meetings of the Union home minister with Bhattacharjee.
The latter had said he “was happy” with the Centre’s attitude and claimed his demand for continuing the joint operations had been accepted. Banerjee didn’t express her feelings about the outcome of today’s meeting to the media. “I can’t divulge everything. There are some secrecy involved in these meetings,” she said.