In a mammoth rally at the heart of Kolkata today, Mamata Banerjee announced that once she came to power in West Bengal, her first duty would be to return the land to the unwilling farmers of Singur.
Though the crucial assembly election is due in May 2011, Mamata asked her captive audience to wait for another three months before the Left rule come to an end.
The meeting was an annual fare to mourn the death of 13 people who died of police firing on this day in 1993 on the streets of Kolkata while participating in a Youth Congress demonstration which was led by Mamata Benerjee. In the last few years, keeping with the growing popularity of Mamata Banerjee, the 21 July rally became a show of strength of the TMC.
Today’s rally surpassed all the previous occasions by the sheer size of the crowd. All the roads converging on Esplanade East were choc-a-block with people hours before the meeting began. Conservative estimates made by police and political observers put it at not less than two hundred thousand. Emboldened by the massive presence of crowd, Mamata announced that the Centre must put a stop to the ongoing joint operation against the Naxalites in Lalgarh.
According to Mamata, though the operation was launched to tackle the growing menace of the Naxalites in that area, it had caused terrible distress to the innocent tribal people. She alleged that the armed CPI(M) cadres started taking possession of some areas in the Junglemahal taking the shield of anti-Naxalite police operation there.
She promised to take it up with the Prime Minister soon. All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Keshav Rao and state Congress president Manas Bhuiyan were present on the stage with Mamata to stress their support to the anti-Left struggle in the state. Keshav Rao announced that unity between the TMC and the Congress would remain intact in the state and political change would take place under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee.
Pranab Mukherjee was expected to attend the rally but could not come owing to his preoccupation with the chief ministers’ meet in Delhi. Manas Bhuiyan read out a letter of Pranab Mukherjee to Mamata congratulating her for her contribution to the anti-Left movement in the state.
But the Congress received a minor jolt when one of its MLAs, Sabitri Mitra, announced her decision of leaving the Congress for the TMC. But a discordant note was visible within the TMC fold as Kabir Suman, the dissident MP, was absent in today’s rally. So were absent Mahasweta Devi, Bibhas Chakraborty, Shubhaprasanna and some other prominent artists and intellectuals who used to be present in almost every occasion to lend their support to the TMC's cause.
When contacted over phone, some of them did not respond the calls. Mamata played down their absence by saying that she failed to invite them.
Mamata announced her future programme as a build-up to the coming assembly elections. She declared that on July 27, the TMC would hold a rally at Nanoor and a rally at Lalgarh on August 9. Finally in September, the party will hold a rally at Darjeeling where the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha is organising a movement for a separate Gorkhaland state to bring peace in the area, Mamata said.
In an attempt to deflect the charges against her for neglecting her duty as the minister of railways, Mamata alleged that the two train accidents in Sardiha and Sainthia in two months were the handiwork of a deeper conspiracy hatched by the CPI(M).
She said that it was not mere coincidence that the two accidents took place at midnight. “They (CPI-M) are doing sabotage from within the railways,” she said.
Giving a clarion call to defeat the CPI(M) in the coming election, Mamata declared that her party would give special attention to the improvement of agriculture and echoing the CPI(M) slogan, she said that her party would give priority to both agriculture and industry.
For the past three years, while spreading her party's influence among the poor peasants in rural Bengal, Mamata had appropriated much of the Left slogans.
Today, she brought a number of people on the dais, who were relatives of martyrs in various peasant movements starting from ‘Tebhaga’ (1945-48), food movement (1966), Singur & Nandigram underscoring the point that in Bengal Mamata represents the peasants interest today.
