Didi threatens to make posters of Opposition! Who would pay for all these expenses?

Didi threatens to make posters of Opposition! Who would pay for all these expenses?

Didi got more claps than Mithun Chakrabarti`s Filmi dialogue,`MARBO EKHANE, LASH PORBE SHMASHANE'!

Didi declared,` BARABARI KORLE POSTER BAANIYE DEBO'!

Palash Biswas

Are we thieves?

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130504/jsp/frontpage/story_16857669.jsp#.UYUdyKKBlA0

Didi got more claps than Mithun Chakrabarti`s Filmi dialogue,`MARBO EKHANE, LASH PORBE SHMASHANE'!

Didi declared,` BARABARI KORLE POSTER BAANIYE DEBO'!

Late last night, every inch of BT Raod from Dunlop to soepur was covered with TMC flags. It has been right from the doorsteps of the Writers!Didi landed this afternoon in Amrabati Maidan, Sodepur amidst unprecedented security exercise. The Barasat road connecting to BT Road was closed and commuters had no way but to walk on. Everywhere police personnel were seen on duty. Yes, the chief minister should have the security cover ups. But she was not on official duty. She incarnated herself in Sodepur to reply the CPIM campaign to damage her image. Sodepur, in turn, witnessed the personification of lady vengeance in their beloved leader who was welcomed with flowers and greetings. Didi simply threatened to make postres of the opposition. She may have every right to do this considering the tradition of Bengal power politics, but the question remains unanswered who would pay for all these expenses!

Stopping short of giving a call for a fourth front at the national-level, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today exhorted regional parties to come under one umbrella and oust the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre.

"Now there should be a slogan -- No third UPA government. Let all regional parties unite to provide a stable and pro-people government at the Centre," Banerjee told a party rally in this North 24 Parganas district town, Sodepur Panihati.Claiming that the UPA would not come to power in the next Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool Congress supremo said, "One, two, three, bid goodbye to the UPA government. We want a change in the seat of power in Delhi. We have the strength to fight all odds and ensure that a third UPA government is not formed after the Lok Sabha elections."

Banerjee, who spoke for nearly two hours, alleged a conspiracy by the Congress and the CPI(M) against her government, while dubbing the the Central government 'vindictive' towards West Bengal. Alleging that the Centre wanted to deprive the state economically, she said that conspiracies began after the Trinamool Congress quit the UPA government.

Earlier,the chief minister said: "The CPI-M alleges that party MP Kunal Ghosh is a thief, MP Srinjoy Bose, Madan (minister Madan Mitra) and Mukul (Roy, all-India Trinamul general secretary) are thieves ..... all our party leaders are thieves and you (CPI-M leaders) are honest men."Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on friday during the party's general council meeting said the state government was being "forced" to hold the panchayat poll in the "sweltering heat of May-June" because its "earlier plan" to hold the poll in February was scuttled.  

"You should go to people and tell them the facts," she said.  

Miss Banerjee, while addressing the party leaders and workers today, asked all MPs and MLAs to organise sustained campaigns from block to district levels against the "canards" spread by the CPI-M and the Congress.

She asked her party leaders and workers to fight the CPI-M politically and not physically and explain to the people how "chit funds" thrived during the Left Front rule which is the root cause of the depositors' plight today. They would  also have to caution the people against depositing money in such chit funds, she said.

Though two of her MPs ~ Kunal Ghosh and Somen Mitra ~ did not attend the meeting, Srinjoy Bose was present.

She reportedly told her party members it was the CPI-M which allowed chit funds to grow and thrive as they used to fund the party and its leaders.

She also cautioned her student brigade not to use party flags on the premises of schools, colleges and hospitals.

Alleging that CPI(M) had amassed movable and immovable property running into crores of rupees in the last 34 years, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday said there would be an inquiry to ascertain the 'benami' property of political parties.

"CPI(M) amassed thousands of crores of rupees in property. Propertywise, CPI(M) now ranks next to Congress and BJP," Banerjee told a Trinamool Congress rally in Sodepur.

The chief minister said an inquiry would be made to ascertain which party had "benami property and trusts."

The chief minister also claimed had not Trinamool Congress come to power, many more investors would have been duped by chit funds.

"Since we have come to power, this fraud has been unearthed, otherwise more people would have been deceived," she claimed.

"We have formulated a strong law to curb chit funds," she said.

"Enough is enough, I will ask investors not to keep funds in chit funds," she added.

Meanwhile,firing a fresh salvo at West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress over the Saradha Group scam in West Bengal, the Congress Saturday demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her "ignorance" about the chit fund muddle.

"Is it believable that the chief minister had no prior information about the scam that was waiting to happen? If she is really that much ignorant, then she has no right to continue. She must immediately resign," Congress parliamentarian Deepa Dasmunshi said here.

Ever since the Saradha scam broke out, Banerjee has maintained that she had no idea till April 15 about the flourishing chit fund business and the financial irregularities of Saradha.

"Apart from SEBI, various other departments have written to her informing about the flourishing ponzi firms in the state, there have been police complaints, but she chose not to pay heed to them," said Dasmunshi adding that Banerjee deliberately chose to ignore the warnings to secure her party's interests.

The Congress, which Saturday took out a rally in the city to demand a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the scam, accused Banerjee of shielding the guilty.

"She is shying away from a CBI probe because she knows such a probe will bring out the unholy nexus of Trinamool with Saradha. If it is probed by a state agency, she will be successful in shielding those guilty," state Congress president Pradip Bhattacharya said.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) on Friday accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of acting as Saradha group's "unofficial brand ambassador" by concealing facts and diverting attention from the chit fund mess in order to avoid a CBI inquiry.

"She is concealing more than what she is revealing," CPI-M leader Mohammad Salim said here.

Banerjee was trying to divert attention from the main issue, Salim said a day after Banerjee displayed some newspaper photographs at a public rally purportedly showing former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Salim with "chit fund operators".

"When it was required that all the properties be attached and confiscated, she gave the excuse that there were no laws to do so... Were you waiting for the bill to pass or were you giving them time to wrap up?" said Salim at a press conference in Kolkata.

Party sources said she even named some of her party ministers, MLAs and MPs like Bratya Basu, Partha Bahumik, Dinesh Tribedi, Haji Nurul, Govinda Naskar to hold more meetings at block and district levels. She asked party workers and activists not to indulge in any act which will make people lose their trust on them.

She cautioned that there should not be more than one trade union (INTTUC) wing in any organisation. She asked Trinamul youth, student and Yuva to work together. She reportedly expressed her displeasure over the tussle between her Haldia MLA Shuli Saha and Tamluk MP and Trinamul Youth Congress president Suvendu Adhikari.

"Expectation from the chief minister is not just show and wave a bunch of newspapers or publicise some already published newspapers, but we expect that chief minster should take some action and arrest all the gulty irrespective of their political affiliations," he said.

"The question at this juncture of time it is not important which photograph carries whose photo, the question is are all those who have run away with peoples hard earned money," said Salim.

Salim alleged that Banerjee had earlier given exclusive interviews to chit fund funded television channels, and ordered that newspapers brought out by such companies instead of the dailies with larger circulations be kept at the state-run libraries.

"She promoted these channels and newspapers. Her partymen headed the Saradha's media group. if (Trinamool MP and actress) Shatabdi Roy was the official brand ambassador of the company, Banerjee was the unofficial brand ambassador."

Salim said that Mamata wanted to avoid a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry at any cost and "her intention was to show to the high court that she has been doing a very good work" in this case.

Continuing her tirade against the CPI(M) and the Congress over the Saradha chit fund scam, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said that the two parties had a lot to answer for and asked partymen to counter the allegations vigorously. "They (CPI-M) are merrily calling everyone chit fund thief. They themselves have to do some very serious answering about their dubious role during their regime," Banerjee was quoted by a party insider as telling a close door general council meeting of party MPS, MLAs and councillors in Kolkata.

The Trinamul Congress leadership today remained tightlipped about the "sensational" comment of Mr Kartik Banerjee, brother of party chief Mamata Banerjee, that it won't wash if someone (read Miss Banerjee) pleaded that they weren't aware of the activities of the Saradha Group that had been collecting money from tens of thousands of depositors for the past few years only to dupe them subsequently.

Mr Banerjee made the statement in a television interview.

The chief minister had recently pleaded she had no inkling about the activities of the group and had come to know about the swindling only recently.

"I warned the party leadership over a year ago against the disaster that some unscrupulous micro-finance operators would cause to depositors, especially, belonging to lower income group. But, my words were not heeded by the leadership, since I am a small fry in the party," Mr Banerjee said.

He asserted: "Didi is honest and everyone knows about her integrity. But she is surrounded by some dubious persons."

Mr Banerjee also penned an article in a magazine detailing how his NGO had been for the past several months trying to make people aware of the dangers of "chit" funds through seminars and posters.

On the other hand, Mr Rajdeep Majumder during the day filed a criminal defamation case on behalf of Mr Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of the chief minister, against CPI-M leader and former minister Gautam Deb for his allegation levelled at a party meeting at Panihati on 28 April that Mr Banerjee had raised crores of rupees through a "chit fund" company.

Ridiculing the CPI(M) for branding many of her party leaders as thieves, the chief minister said "Kunal (Ghosh) is a thief, Tumpai (party MP Srinjay Bose) is a thief, then Mukul is a thief and I myself am also a thief. But you (CPI-M leaders) are all pious." Party MP Kunal Ghosh against whom Saradha Group chairman Sudipta Sen has brought allegations in a letter to CBI was not present at the meeting.

The CM alleged that the CPI(M) was hand in glove with chit funds and had helped their 'wild growth' in the state, while the Marxist party and the Congress were conspiring against the TMC government. She directed her partymen to politically tackle the 'malicious campaign'. "I exhort you to politically counter such malicious campaign by going to the people but not by pushing them into their houses so that they cannot mislead," she said.

It is turning out to be virtually a free for all among the politicians of West Bengal in the aftermath of the Saradha chit fund bust. Relatives of political figures are being dragged into the muddle as allegations of corruption and nepotism abound.

ashing out at the CPI-M at a party rally, Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee today showed clippings from the CPI-M's party organ and other dailies in which former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar were seen with heads of various chit fund groups including the Saradha Group at various programmes.

"I made an off-the-cuff remark while announcing additional tax on cigarette to raise funds for duped depositors and it was turned into a big political drama. We have limited taxation options to raise funds," she said.

Miss Banerjee had kicked up a controversy by urging smokers to "smoke more" and pay more so that funds for the depositors could be raised.

Ridiculing Mr Bhattacharjee, who had asserted at Panihati on 28 April that his party never allowed such chit fund operators to come near it, Miss Banerjee showed how CPI-M party organ, Ganashakti, and telephone directory DIAL it publishes contains maximum advertisement from the Saradha Group and other chit funds. She also asked which group had funded the CPI-M's party channel.

The chief minister scoffed at the demand for a CBI probe and said her government won't spare cheats and those who aid them. "But if you (read the CPI-M leaders) are caught by the law, then the law will take its own course and I'll not interfere in the legal matter,'' she said.

"I've punished my councillor and borough chairmen Iqbal alias Munna and Shambhunath Kow who were arrested and are in jail. Even Arabul Islam (former MLA from Bhangar) was arrested and was imprisoned for 42 days. It was actually the former CPI-M minister Rezzak Mollah who stormed into a meeting Mr Islam had organised. I hope, Mr Islam will become more restrained,'' Miss Banerjee said.

Mr Islam was in the front row of the rally.

"The CPI-M talk big about the chit fund but at the same time it takes funds from them. But my party is transparent and it has credentials. Our party organ doesn't get any advertisement from the government or any chit fund. If anyone does wrong he will be punished. If you buy 2 kg chillies from the market, one or two may be rotten and you will have to throw them away. But the whole lot cannot be bad,'' Miss Banerjee said.

She also said some persons who joined her party from the CPI-M and other political outfits were responsible for the ongoing trouble the Trinamul was facing.

She explained she had kept quiet for the time being as she was busy setting up a commission, arresting Saradha Group chief and his associates, forming an emergency fund after passing of the financial Bill in the House. She was ready to face the people, she asserted.

It all started last month with pictures and video footages doing the rounds, of a number of ruling Trinamool Congress leaders - some of them ministers and MPs - sharing the stage with Saradha Group chief Sudipta Sen at various programmes of the Group companies. The opposition seized the opportunity to cry hoarse over the Trinamool's links with the tainted Group in which party MP Kunal Ghosh worked as media chief executive officer. Soon there emerged similar photographs and video grabs of a couple of leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which had been in power for 34 years before Mamata Banerjee took office in 2011.

Trinamool grabbed its chance, and it was all even-steven. Within days, pictures of leaders cutting across the political spectrum sharing the stage with Saradha and other chit fund aided companies flooded the media.

Gautam Deb, the irrepressible CPI-M leader and former minister, then took centrestage. Addressing a public rally in Panihati of the North 24 Parganas district, Deb alleged that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew and Trinamool Yuva head Abhishek Banerje had amassed fortunes of over Rs.300 crore within a couple of years, and wondered whether he was running a chit fund business too.

"If Abhishek himself runs a chit fund, then how can Mamata Banerjee take action against other chit funds?" Deb asked.

The very next day, the Trinamool termed the allegations as "slanderous and downright fictional", and said on its website: "What the CPI(M) and its former minister have done amounts to defaming an innocent person. They will hear from our lawyers soon.".

Abhishek, the president of Trinamool Yuva, the party's youth wing, "will sue the CPI-M for defamation", said the statement.

Saying that the company was "not at all into chit funds", the Trinamool extended an invitation to the CPI(M) and its leaders to study its books "and try and trace wrong-doing amounting to even Rs.300, let alone Rs.300 crore".

Abhishek slapped a legal notice on Deb demanding an apology and withdrawal of the allegations. Forty eight hours later he moved the court.

On Thursday, Mamata Banerjee herself launched a counter attack at a public rally in North Kolkata. Waving a thick file of the CPI-M mouthpiece Ganashakti and other papers, she displayed purported photographs of former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattachajee and other Marxist leaders with chit fund company bosses. She also sought to distance herself from Deb's allegations about his family. "I don't have any family. I am all alone. My only relatives are the public," she said.

But it was a close relative of Banerjee who added to her discomfiture. The chief minister's brother Kartick said in an article in a magazine that he had warned the party almost a year back about the mushrooming of chit funds and the Trinamool leaders' hobnobbing with them.

Mamata Banerjee has maintained, since the Saradha scam broke out, that she had no idea till April 15 about the flourishing chit fund business and the financial irregularities of Saradha. The same day, Deb held a media meet hurling a second barrage of allegations against Abhishek Banerjee and his company.

On Friday, the Trinamool fielded a relatively lightweight minister Ujjal Biswas, an unfamiliar face to TV news viewers. He accused Deb of nepotism, mentioning names of his family members who had allegedly been given preferential treatment and siphoned off money during his ministerial stint. "We have instituted inquiries into all these," said Biswas.

Hours later, the action shifted to the CPI-M headquarters, where party central committee member Md Selim responded to Banerjee's allegations and launched his own offensive. And so it goes, as the buck is passed back and forth.

Are we thieves?

OUR BUREAU

*

Calcutta, May 3: Mamata Banerjee today let loose a burst of questions dipped in sarcasm, staking the credibility of her government on the unuttered answers.

"Kunal chor? Madan chor? Tumpai chor? Mukul chor? Aami chor? Sabai chor? Baki ra shob sadhu (Is Kunal a thief? Is Madan a thief? Is Tumpai a thief? Is Mukul a thief? Am I a thief? Are all of us thieves? And the rest are saints)!" a Trinamul leader quoted the chief minister as telling a general council meeting of the party.

Mamata was talking about the campaign against the party and the government, the Trinamul leader added, alluding to the Saradha scandal that is still unfolding and manifesting itself in suspected suicides.

The chief minister's rhetorical questions were immediately seen as a virtual clean chit to party colleagues whose proximity to the Saradha Group has come under the public scanner.

Some Trinamul loyalists heard a clarion call for cleaning up the party. They cited Mamata's reference to herself as evidence that she was holding up her own example and asking others to stick to the straight and narrow.

But the personal reference itself and several political tea leaves floating about at the venue strengthened the perception that the chief minister was lending her shield of honesty to the leaders under fire.

Such a strategy — the unquestioned leader positioning herself or himself in front of besieged lesser mortals, prompting blanket genuflection — usually works in the country.

But not always. Veterans recalled how Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had tried to shield then defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon when troubles with China were mounting in the 1960s. But veteran socialist Acharya J.B. Kripalani recounted in the Lok Sabha how Britain's Conservatives had once compelled their Prime Minister to resign and appealed to those "Congressmen who were not afraid of the British bullets and bayonets to place the good of the nation above the good of the party". Menon eventually had to resign after the Chinese war.

No Kripalani is known to have sprung to his feet this afternoon at the Kshudiram Anushilan Kendra, near the Netaji Indoor Stadium, where over 500 Trinamul leaders were listening to Mamata.

Kunal Ghosh, Trinamul Rajya Sabha MP and former executive chairman of Saradha media, did not attend the meeting after being advised to stay away. MPs Srinjoy Bose, Tapas Paul and Satabdi Roy and transport minister Madan Mitra, whose names have been linked with the Saradha Group or other deposit-mobilising companies, attended.

An intervention from Mamata to defend the leaders had become a necessity after party MPs Sisir Adhikari, Subhendu Adhikari and Somen Mitra suggested at party forums that heads must roll.

But the message the audience appeared to have imbibed was strikingly different. "Those who are accusing us, we have to outshout them," a Trinamul leader said later. It was not clear if the leader was referring to critics within the party's own ranks.

The choice of speakers suggested Mamata was in no mood to hear criticism. Trinamul all-India general secretary Mukul Roy and state ministers Partha Chatterjee, Subrata Mukherjee and Amit Mitra did not broach the default crisis in their speeches while MPs Sisir Adhikari and his son Subhendu did not get an opportunity to speak.

"Outshouting others or denying them an opportunity to speak can be a strategy in party forums, but will it work outside?" wondered aloud a party leader but in private.

He appeared to be suggesting that the last word had not yet been spoken and the course could still change if the feedback from the ground continued to be grim.

According to him, ground-level party activists who were facing uncomfortable questions in the districts had expected Mamata to take some action against some leaders. They had also expected a set of directives on dealing with such companies. Mamata confined herself to rolling out a list of dos and don'ts for the trade union and student wings of the party.

"She has not explained what we must tell the people, except for attacking the CPM and the Congress…. People are questioning us about the ties some of our leaders had with these (deposit-mobilisation) companies. What do we tell them?" asked a Trinamul MP.

In shying away from sending a message to her party leaders who had links with Saradha and other sham companies, Mamata has followed in the footsteps of her political rival, the CPM, which squandered a chance to rectify itself after the debacle in Bengal.

The CPM state committee held a series of meetings to analyse the reasons behind the 2011 drubbing and drew the conclusion that the high-handedness of a section of its leaders and growing social disconnect had led to the defeat.

Although CPM insiders said some "action like suspension and expulsion" was taken in North 24-Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan, Purulia, Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri, prominent faces were spared.

At the behest of former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, former MPs Lakshman Seth and Amitava Nandi were dropped from the state committee at the party's state conference in February 2012, but their pre-eminence in the party continued.

In defending her colleagues, Mamata has followed the same model, which has struck deep roots in Bengal.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130504/jsp/frontpage/story_16857669.jsp#.UYUdyKKBlA0