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Mamata: anti-CPI (M) front to be announced on December 30

KOLKATA: The formation of a “secular, progressive and democratic” anti-Communist Party of India (Marxist] front is to be announced on December 30, Trinamool Congress chief, Mamata Banerjee, has said.

A “common minimum programme” and the names of the constituents of the front will be made known then, general secretary of the party and Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Partha Chatterjee, told The Hindu here on Friday.

“Left parties other than the CPI(M) have been urged to join the front. The Congress too is welcome to be a part of it but it appears to be buying time on the matter,” he said.

“The Trinamool Congress severing ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Democratic Alliance is an essential pre-requisite for the Congress joining any anti-Left Front,” Manas Bhunia, general secretary of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee and leader of the Congress Legislative Party, said.

Ms. Banerjee had earlier appealed to parties within the Left Front that had expressed their misgivings over some recent decisions of the State Government to join the proposed combine.

But the Trinamool Congress leadership seems to have given up on the idea.

“The front is to be set up at the State-level and the question of whether its constituents belong to the United Progressive Alliance or the NDA is irrelevant,” Mr. Chatterjee added.

The Trinamool Congress is a constituent of the NDA but is at odds with the State unit of the BJP.

There are indications that most of the partners of the Trinamool Congress in the Krishi Jami, Jiban, Jibika Raksha (Protection of Farmland, Lives and Livelihood) Committeewill be part of the front.

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