Kolkata, : West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC)
supremo has said the party will hold door to door campaign to ‘save Bengali culture’.
“We are proud of Bengali culture. We will start door to door campaign on Bengali
culture. We will spread the word of icons, from Mahatma Gandhi to Netaji, Bhagat
Singh to Dr Ambedkar, Raja Rammohan Roy, Rabindranath, Vidyasagar, Nazrul,
Matangini, Birsa Munda and others,” she said during a meeting with the party
MPs and MLAs last evening to review the Trinamool Congress’ performance in
the Lok Sabha election.
Ms Banerjee also said a temporary statue of Vidyasagar will be installed at the
same place where it was vandalised on May 14. A bronze statue is also being made.
Another statue of Rabindranath will be installed near Presidency University and that
of Ashutosh Mukherjee will be installed near University of Calcutta.
Deliberating on the draft education policy of the Centre which sought to make
Hindi a compulsory language till the eighth standard, she said, “Every State has its
own linguistic identity. Regional languages must get the priority. Everyone must have
the freedom to choose. Everyone must be allowed to speak in a language of their
choice. Unnecessary interference should not be made. No one can control everything.”
Trinamool supremo alleged that democracy was made a mockery by money power
in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election and demanded return of ballot papers.
Talking to media persons after holding a threadbare discussion with her MLAs as
a part of stock-taking exercise after the party’s run-of-the-mill performance in the
recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, Ms Banerjee said, ” Democracy has been
made a mockery by money power in the hustings. There has been a rampant
misuse of money, muscle, government and institutional power to win election. But
despite all odds, our party workers have put up a brave fight in the election. ”
” The BJP managed to win 18 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state because
of the Left Front, ” she said adding, ” The BJP managed only 18 seats not 23 as
they were claiming, and that too because of the Left Front parties. But still we have
managed to increase four per cent vote share,” she iterated.
Stating that a fact-finding committee should be constituted to ascertain the details
about EVMs, she said in order to save democracy ballot paper system must return in
the polls.
“We want ballot papers back. We don’t want EVM. Save democracy, bring back
ballot papers,” the chief minister said.
“We will run this campaign across country with all political parties. Even America has
done away with it,” said Ms Banerjee adding, “Only two per cent machines are verified,
98 per cent are not verified.”
She claimed that machines were not working and the one that were changed “were
not programmed for fair polling. They were pre programmed for a party.”
“One lakh machines are missing. EVM voting is not the verdict of people,” TMC supremo
declared. Her comments came in reference to the BJP’s massive victory in the Lok Sabha
election.
She also formed a committee comprising Subrata Bakshi, Partha Chattopadhyay, Firhad
Hakim, Suvendu Adhikari, Abhishek Bandyopadhyay – to decide the schedule of the
‘Janasanjog Yatra’. The routes will be decided by the district leadership.
Ms Banerjee has already conducted two meetings with the senior leadership to assess
what went wrong in the general election – one on May 25 and another on May 31 – and this
meeting is being viewed as a post-mortem of the actual reasons resulting in the party’s
lacklustre show even in areas which underwent a plethora of developmental activities.
UNI.
