With both opposition CPM and Congress rallying against the Trinamool Congress on the Saradha chit fund scam, the ruling party in West Bengal has decided to train gun on the CPM and start a campaign to point out that the episode of chit funds started under the aegis of the Left government.
With Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee having kick-started the campaign during her latest tour of north Bengal, Trinamool leaders have been carrying forward with the campaign in Kolkata and inside the state Assembly.
The Left is trying to change its lot by raising a voice on the issue that came to light afresh following the release of a video testimonial by arrested Trinamool MP Kunal Ghosh.
While the CPM demanded that the 12 people named in Kunal’s video, including Mamata and senior Trinamool leader Mukul Roy be questioned in relation to the investigation for the Saradha scam, the chief minister said the CPM should be made answerable for the scam as it was during Left rule the chit fund companies thrived.
Voices of Trinamool leaders and the party machinery added to the ongoing clamour across the state.
“They have committed sins for 35 years. Today they are clamouring for an answer. Who will reply? It is you who have to reply. It was during the Left regime, which has looted the people that chit funds mushroomed in the state. What were they doing?” Banerjee asked at a rally at Kushmundi in South Dinajpur district on Thursday. Her party’s senior leaders asked the same questions within the Assembly, which the Left tried its best to combat.
According to Trinamool sources, Banerjee has asked leaders to talk about how her government has taken proactive steps to ensure that victims of the Saradha chit fund scam are compensated of at least their capital amount invested.
They have also been asked to talk about how after the Sanchayita chit fund went bust in the 1980s lakhs of people were ruined and the erstwhile Left government did not distribute a single penny to depositors.
“We have made arrests and returned money to 2.5 lakh poor depositors. This makes us proud,” Banerjee said at another public rally recently.
Trinamool insiders said that the party would continue with the campaign of how Mamata Banerjee’s government came to the rescue of small time investors in the wake of the Saradha scam and unlike other parties did not come in the way even when one of its MPs got arrested on grounds of being involved in the scam.
While the Left plans to launch a campaign to highlight the involvement of ruling party’s leaders in the Saradha scam from a public rally in Kolkata on December 6, Trinamool has already launched campaign gaining the early bird’s advantage, party leaders said.