NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Rediff Shopping

Shop & gift from thousands of products!   Books     Music       Apparel   Jewellery   Flowers   More..      Safe Shopping

Congress charges Trinamul with engineering defections

Rifat Jawaid in Calcutta

Enraged activists of the Chhatra Parishad [student wing of the Congress] attacked the home of Corporator Minda Kumari on Saturday.

Kumari, recently elected to Calcutta Municipal Corporation on a Congress ticket from ward 80, had switched loyalty to the Trinamul Congress on Friday.

The Trinamul leadership alleged that the attack showed "the party's frustration over its fast eroding support base in Calcutta'. The Congress, for its part, charged the Trinamul with engineering defections.

Agitated Congress sympathisers broke windowpanes and threw bricks at Kumari's house at the Calcutta Port Trust colony, Kidderpore, before police dispersed them.

Calcutta Mayor Subrata Mukherjee lashed out at the Congress leadership for "encouraging acts of violence against my party's corporator".

"In a democratic system, every individual has the freedom to join any political party. What the Congress supporters did was indicative of the party's hooliganism. These people are frustrated that their candidates did not perform well in the CMC polls," Mukherjee said.

The Congress leaders warned that they would bring in a no-confidence motion if the Trinamul continued to encourage defections. Congress support is crucial for the Trinamul to maintain its supremacy in the 141-member corporation.

The Congress leader in the CMC, Iqbal Ahmed, and West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee's vice-president Saugata Roy met Mukherjee on Friday to express dissatisfaction at the way the Trinamul was weakening the party.

"We told Mukherjee that they are weakening us when we are supporting them in the CMC. We minced no words in saying that we will be left with no option but to review our support," Ahmed said.

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report