Kolkata, Nov 17: The CPM may still deny it but its ministers have read the writing on the wall. The controversial party minister Abdur Rezak Mollah, holding the Land and Land Reforms portfolio, said on Monday: “The CPM has now become stale. Even the government is stale. I have said this in the party also. Nobody can stop Mamata (Banerjee) from coming to power in 2011.”
Mollah is not the only minister admitting that there is very little likelihood of the Left Front returning to power in the state.
At a function of the Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) at Rajarhat recently, with Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta and IT Minister Debesh Das present, Minister for Housing and Public Health Engineering Gautam Dev said: “In 2011, Mamata Banerjee will be the chief minister.
So she should act more responsibly on the question of developing the state.” He was talking about the demonstration by some Trinamool workers in the area against land acquisition.
Other ministers have been saying that in light of the successive poll routs suffered by the Left in the state recently, the party should call for early elections. The first minister to raise his voice was Kiranmoy Nanda of the Socialist Party, who holds the Fisheries portfolio.
“I would urge the Left Front to go for early elections and seek a fresh mandate from the people,” Nanda, who has been minister for the past 27 years, said.
PWD Minister and senior RSP leader Kshiti Goswami urged Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to resign and seek a fresh mandate. “This issue will be discussed in our party,” the minister said.
Mollah has also backed a Railway Ministry proposal, spearheaded by Mamata, for a stadium at Canning in South 24 Parganas, on land belonging to the Land and Land Reforms Department.
“I have no problem handing over the land to the Railways. In fact Kanti Ganguly (Minister for Sports) gave me a proposal 10 days ago that the Sports Department wanted to build a stadium there. Now Mamata has said the thing at a public rally. If she sends me a formal proposal, I will first discuss with Kantibabu and then taking his consent, hand over the land to the Railways,” Mollah said on Monday.
The Chief Minister may not appreciate Mollah’s stand considering he had himself shot down Mamata’s proposals both to take over the sick state PSU Basumati Corporation and to set up a railway coach factory at the Tata Motors’ abandoned plant at Singur.
This is not the first time Mollah has chosen to tread a path different from the state government. A severe critic of the Chief Minister’s policy on land acquisition for industry, he has said that it was behind the party’s successive poll losses.
–Agencies