While ruling out the possibility of any seat sharing alliance with the Trinamul Congress in Bengal for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury stated the party’s intention to extend a long rope to Mamata Banerjee as far as her participation in the opposition INDIA bloc was concerned.
Speaking to reporters at the sidelines on the first of the three-day extended conference of the CPI-M Bengal state committee in Howrah, which focuses on reviewing how far party conference decisions taken in 2022 could be implemented in the wake of the emerging political situation in the state, Yechury said: “Trinamul is a party of anti-democratic activities having corruption at its roots. It never was or can ever be the alternative to the BJP. We felt the need to find an alternative to the political-ideological project of RSS-BJP. If that force has to be defeated, then an alternative politics and ideology must be provided to people which is absent in the TMC. It has remained part of the NDA before and shared the Union ministry with the BJP. We don’t have issues if, under changed circumstances, they want to become part of the INDIA bloc and defeat the BJP. But for Bengal, we think that the alternative to the BJP is the Left Front and its allies and not TMC.”
“We are not going with the TMC in Bengal. The state committee doesn’t need to force this on our workers against their will. We are ourselves asking them not to go with the TMC. But we must not lose focus on what the larger issue before us is,” Yechury continued.
“We will see how long the TMC stays with us. People will give their reply if they don’t and we don’t need to comment. They say they want to fight. We welcome them. If they choose to get into an understanding with the BJP later, then people will reply. It’s on them till how far they wish to remain in this fight. There is no question of faith and trust on them here,” the general secretary said.
Stressing on the need to “keep the BJP away from the government in Delhi to allow Constitutional institutions like the Parliament, Judiciary, Election Commission, CBI and ED to function independently”, the Left leader said: “Our clarion call to all parties who are ready and willing was to come together and primarily achieve this task. To save India, its Constitution and its secular-democratic character, the BJP must be separated from government and state power.”
Interestingly, though, Yechury echoed Mamata Banerjee’s “washing machine theory” when it came to analyses of action taken by the central agencies against TMC leaders in probing corruption. “We have no issues with the agencies conducting probes into corruption. But we have objections to the agencies targeting the opposition and harassing them in the name of tackling corruption. Let them prove corruption by taking accused to courts and convicting them. Nobody is stopping them. But when accused leaders defect to BJP, then mysteriously cases against them get dropped. This is what we call misuse of agencies for political objectives,” Yechury argued.
Reiterating his solidarity with Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra in the bribe-for-questions dust up, the CPI-M apparatchik said: “I have remained an ethics committee member in Rajya Sabha for over a decade and during that entire period we never met for more than four to five occasions. What I find laughable and surprising is the way this committee met in two quick successions after the complaint against Mahua Moitra was lodged. What is the hurry? It’s because Mr Adani is involved in this.”
“We have no objection to their probe but we have questions about the manner in which this probe is being conducted. It has thrown probe propriety out of the window. There are laid down rules and procedures for the manner in which such investigations are conducted, how evidence is sought and how people are to be summoned. I know this because I have remained the chairman of a parliamentary committee for nearly eight years. We ask them to follow procedures. Committees are nor meant to harass people. Committees are for investigating and finding out what really happened,” Yechury maintained.