RSP, Trinamul criticise CPM

SILIGURI, April 15: The Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Trinamul Congress today slammed the CPI-M for its “opportunistic policy,” which they alleged had complicated the situation in the Darjeeling Hills. Both organizations urged the CPI-M to exercise restraint under the present circumstances.

Mr Binay Chakravarty, a member of the RSP state secretariat today said that the CPI-M was responsible for the fast deteriorating situation in the Darjeeling hills. “The party in its desperation to reap political harvest out of the hill situation is playing with fire. While speaking of peace and fraternity on the one hand, the CPI-M is inciting tension by indiscriminately branding the hill people as ‘outsiders’ in the plains,” he added.

The leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly and senior Trinamul Congress leader Mr Partho Chatterjee also accused the CPI-M with playing an opportunist game in the Darjeeling hills. “This mischievous policy of the CPI-M, which is getting reflected in the policy of the state government vis-à-vis the Darjeeling issue could plunge the state into deep crisis,” Mr Chatterjee warned.

The RSP leader Mr Chakravarty further said that the CPI-M's duplicity should be exposed. “It has been initiating some non-political moves like organising conventions to the detriment of the long-term interest of the state and particularly the hills,” he affirmed.

Criticising the recently held unity convention in Siliguri the RSP leader said that mere conventions could not strengthen the bond of unity between the plains and the hills. “It is a chimera. The real unity would emerge in course of mass movement involving the people of the hills and the plains in support of the real issues like price hike, closure of tea estates, shrinking of employment opportunities in the wake of the liberalisation policy and the like,” he averred.

The TMC leader Mr Partho Chatterjee said that the party has become adept in ruling the state through a thoroughly politicised police force. “The state at the behest of the CPI-M is trying to suppress the democratic movement of the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha. We may not support the separate statehood demand. Yet an organisation has every right to put forth its demand in public without coming in the way of the democratic functioning of our constitutional polity,” Mr Chatterjee added.