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No anti-Left front without Congress, says Dasmunsi

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: There can be no secular and democratic front against the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in West Bengal without the Congress, the newly appointed State Congress president, Priyaranjan Dasmunsi, said here on Friday.

In an implicit reference to the Progressive Secular Democratic Front, recently launched by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee to fight the Left Front, he said the “interpretation of secularism cannot be confined to the periphery of a State.”

The Congress has been insisting that it can only partner the Trinamool Congress in their attempts to dislodge the Left Front if Ms. Banerjee dissociates her party from the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance.

It has been widely anticipated in local political circles that with Mr. Dasmunsi taking charge of the Congress unit in the State there are prospects of a rapprochement with the Trinamool Congress.

“Mamata Banerjee is the leader of a major Opposition party in the State and she is a responsible leader. We should not attack each other while fighting the CPI(M),” he said, keeping hopes alive of a reconciliation between the two parties with the coming elections. Both the parties share an anti-CPI(M) “mentality” though there could be differences in the way movements have been launched against the Marxist government and its “anti-people” policies, Mr. Dasmunsi added.

“I have not come here to break any party” but if its workers wish to re-join the Congress they are welcome, he said, when asked about his plans to restore to his party the image it enjoyed as a principal Opposition party before Ms. Banerjee broke away and formed the Trinamool Congress.

‘We’ concept

He chose to play down the factionalism within the Congress pointing out that his first priority as the new chief would be to encourage the concept of “we” in the party’s leadership if the Congress is to be strengthened.

Mr. Dasmunsi criticised the performance of the government in various sectors, including its literacy programme “that is literally a flop” and “the health system that is nightmare.”

“The happenings at Nandigram were a dark spot in the history of human rights” and the “Sachar Committee report has taken the mask off the State government,” he added.

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