KOLKATA: "At a time of change when various reactionary forces are seen to be coming together, let us vow to take the democratic struggle forward in West Bengal; this would be our tribute to the memory of E.M.S. Namboodiripad" and the Government he had set up in Kerala this day 50 years ago — the first government to be led by Communists in the country, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Thursday.

Ridiculing the new found sympathy for "farmland" of Opposition parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the Naxalite groupings and certain non-governmental organisations which have banded together under the `Save Farmland Committee,' Mr. Bhattacharjee wondered "what do they know about land, its value, the meaning of land reforms."

"Do we have to learn from them?" he asked, reiterating that his Government would go ahead "consciously and cautiously" with its development programme for the State by consolidating the agricultural gains achieved and furthering industrial growth.

Speakers at a congregation organised by the West Bengal State Committee of Communist Party of India [Marxist] to commemorate the 50th anniversary of India's first Communist government, however, warned that the forces that had set out to destabilise the E.M.S. Namboodiripad government and ultimately ensured its dismissal in July 1959 were out to do the same in West Bengal, though they were in a different guise.

Destabilisation

Senior leader of the CPI(M) from Kerala, E. Balanandan, said that the "very same model [of disruption and destabilisation] is being implemented in West Bengal by Mamata Banerjee and others."

Biman Bose, secretary of the State Committee of the CPI(M), recalled the role of reactionary national and international forces in the dismissal of the Namboodiripad government in Kerala, in the 28th month of its rule.

"In the coming days, we might see that similar attacks from these forces are being directed at the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Government. But we cannot afford to wait for that day when the forces behind such a conspiratorial design are revealed. We must reach out to the people and be in their midst as we set up to foil such designs," he said.

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