Had talked to Congress on tie-up, says Mishra

CPI(M) Politburo member Surjya Kanta Mishra today said the party has talked to the Congress about a possible electoral tie-up in poll bound West Bengal to fight the Trinamool Congress and the BJP.
"Terror, non-development and unemployment are prevailing during the rule of the Trinamool Congress. As the leader of the opposition in the Assembly, I have talked to the Congress to stop these," Mishra told a public rally at Dhulagarh in Howrah district.
"Now, the Congress has to decide what it will do. They have to talk to their high command. It may take time. (But) the sooner they take the decision, the better," he said.

The former minister said CPI(M) has two slogans: "Trinamool hatao Bengal bachao" and "BJP hatao desh bachao".
On Trinamool president and state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's assurance to industrialists that the party will not harass them, Mishra said it was she herself who had driven away industry from Singur and from Nandigram.
"Now will industry come when your are driven away," Mishra said.

During her speech at the Bengal Global Business Summit yesterday, Banerjee had said, "We do not want to harass the industrialists. It is not good to harass them. Let them be in peace."
CPI(M)'s state committee member agreed that the line

adopted in West Bengal may have violated the official party line, but the state unit was left with no other choice.
"We will continue our fight against TMC and BJP along with Congress. There will be united fight with Congress...The next big election is in 2019...So for the time being the question of alliance with Congress in elections doesn't arise. But our fight to create the broadest possible unity will continue," the state committee member said.
"Several leaders referred to how the Central Committee had ignored the sentiments of state unit, be it expulsion of Somnath Chatterjee or not allowing Jyoti Basu to become the Prime Minister in 1996," another state committee member said.