IRRESPONSIBLE & DANGEROUS MOVES OF THE RAILWAYS MINISTER

Left Parties Submit Memo to the PM


The following is the text of the memorandum given to the prime minister by the leaders of Left parties, Sitaram Yechury, Basudeb Acharia, Shyamal Chakraborty, Prabodh Panda, Manohar Tirki and Barun Mukherjee on December 4, 2009 on the irresponsible and dangerous moves of the railways minister.

YOU have called the ‘Maoists’ the greatest internal threat to the security of the country, and yet, the railway minister has kept providing these elements with her full fledged support in the media and through her declarations and acts. She has also repeatedly called for the release of Chhatradhar Mahato, named accused in murder cases. The railway minister is constantly demanding the withdrawal of joint forces from West Bengal, which will only facilitate the activities of the ‘Maoists’. Within hours of a landmine blast in West Midnapore on 27 November 2009 which killed two policemen, the railway minister denigrated the joint forces.

The said minister has claimed before the media inter alia that the violence being committed on and against the leaders and workers of the CPI(M) is not the handiwork of the CPI(Maoist) but a result of the internecine feud. She has called for the arrest of the Bengal chief minister and in the same breath, the release of Chhatradhar Mahato while repeatedly calling also for application of Article 355 and 356 in Bengal. The ‘Maoists’ receive a moral boost from her declarations and deeds and almost simultaneously the Maoist Leader Kishanji reciprocated by airing his loud suggestions that the present railway minister should be the chief minister of West Bengal.

The annexed copies of the media reports would make it clear, the All India Trinamul Congress, AITC, and the CPI(Maoist), have long been engaged in destabilising the political situation of the state by means of assassination, mayhem, arson, committing crimes on women and generally seeking to create a situation where the democratic fabric of the state is put under great duress. The ‘Maoists’ along with AITC activists are forcing people at gunpoint to join their rally and barricades.

The annexures submitted to the prime minister along with the memorandum provide a detailed list of the leaders and workers of the CPI(M) and Left Front assassinated by the ‘Maoists’ and the People’s War Group (PWG) from 2001. The number of those killed from June 2006 itself is 326. The ‘Maoists’ and the AITC have also killed scores of common men, women, children, as well as police and medical personnel.

The AITC leadership is a close patron of the leadership of the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), and its supremo Chhatradhar Mahato. The annexures submitted provide examples of this state-of-affairs from media reports. Annexure III in the form of a CD contains photos that show the railway minister, Chhatradhar Mahato, and a section of the intelligentsia in confabulation in the area of Lalgarh, which has been a Maoist stronghold. The PCAPA is nothing but a mass front of the CPI (Maoist) as reports in the media have repeatedly noted.

We draw your attention to the recent declaration of the Maoist leader Kishanji that since they have provided support to the AITC at Nandigram against the CPI(M), the AITC should come forward and help them at Lalgarh and adjacent areas.

The most recent incident of the blockade of the Rajdhani Express exposes the AITC game plan further. Even as the blockade was going on and graffiti being painted on the sides of the bogies calling for the release of Chhatradhar Mahato who is presently in police custody, the railways minister blamed the Marxists, meaning the CPI(M) that has held the train up. To add insult to injury, a full 24 hours earlier to the blockade, an AITC central minister Sisir Adhikari had claimed before the media that he ‘knew that the blockade would take place.’ The source of ‘knowledge’ of this minister may kindly be probed and the nation kept informed.

At a time when the ‘Maoists’ have laid claim to the murder of an AITC worker Nishikanta Mondal at Nandigram on 22 September 2009, the railway minister keeps harping on the untruth that he was ‘killed by the CPI(M).’ On 29 November 2009, she has also said that she was privy to clues of the murder. The annexures submitted include the English translation of what has appeared in the Bengali print media on the nexus between the AITC-PCAPA-‘Maoists’ and the original reports in Bengali that have appeared in the Bengali print media.

We urge upon you to take appropriate implicational notice of the developments.