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Monday, May 31, 2004

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Mamata ridicules Congress' call

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA, MAY 30. The Trinamool Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee, today ridiculed the call by senior Congress leaders from West Bengal, such as Pranab Mukherjee and Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, to members of her party to join the Congress.

``The door is open to Pranabda and others of the Congress to join us instead,'' she said.

How could they expect her party leaders and workers to join the Congress when the Trinamool had won nearly 30 per cent of the votes against the Congress' 14 per cent in the recent Lok Sabha polls, Ms. Banerjee asked.

Though apparently still smarting under the poll debacle which saw the Trinamool win only a single Lok Sabha seat in the State — that of Ms. Banerjee — she tried to put up a brave front at a press conference, evading questions relating to her party's poor showing. She attributed her party's defeat primarily to the ``widespread rigging by the Left parties.'' The Congress, which she had for so long been referring to as ``the B team of the CPI(M),'' had now ``become the Marxist Congress.''

She said that the Trinamool leadership was studying the party's performance in the elections.

It was an internal affair of the party. She announced changes at certain levels of the organisation.

Ms. Banerjee criticised Union Minister for Coal and Mines Shibu Soren's plans to shift the Coal India headquarters from the State to Jharkhand and the reported moves to relocate Hindustan Copper and the Damodar Valley Corporation.

The moves were both unjust and illegal and the Trinamool would launch an agitation in protest against the proposals from tomorrow, Ms. Banerjee said.

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