Blame game begins in CPM in West Bengal
Having received its worst drubbing in the Assembly elections, the CPM in West Bengal entered the hall of ignominy by falling behind rival Congress by two seats this time and this never-before-poor-show has triggered a blame game within the party.
The CPM won only 40 seats, down from last time's 176 while the Congress won 42 seats this time, a 100 per cent increase in its tally from 21 in 2006. And, more than two dozens of ministers in the outgoing Buddhadev Bhattacherjee ministry had to bite the dust in the wave for change.
The unprecedented rout has in fact developed more cracks than ever before. And the first to fire the salvo was outgoing Land and Revenue Minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah, who won with a handsome margin of more than 21,000 votes from Canning East in South 24 Parganas district.
In a scathing attack on a section of the party mandarins, Mollah vented his ire against the Left Front government's land acquisition policy, the crucial land portfolio he held though. “My words(of advice) were brutally brushed aside. If they had paid heed to it(my advice), the debacle wouldn't have been so severe. You may ignore a poor man's words,but it proved to be the nemesis of the party," Mollah shot back when asked to elaborate on the reasons for this unprecedented rout.
However, when asked if he would blame Bhattacherjee for this humiliating defeat, he remarked with banter: “The trouble with him( Buddhadev) is that he can't catch a harmless snake and yet leapt to kill a cobra. But don't blame him alone-- a large tree has many a branch...”
And then came the explosive remark about Industry Minister Nirupam Sen who also gunned for land acquisition in a big way. “... Half of the people in the world knew he'll be defeated and it happened exactly so.”
Sen lost by more than 32,000 thousand votes in the Marxist heartland of Burdwan district. Branding himself a rebel within the party, the land revenue minister refused to speak his mind on whether he would like to be chosen as the opposition leader on the floor of the Assembly.
