Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Left Front election campaign from February: Biman Bose

The campaign for the 2011 elections to the West Bengal Assembly will begin with a massive rally planned in Kolkata on February 13, it was announced by Biman Bose, chairman of the State Left Front Committee, here on Tuesday.

“The February 13 rally will be culmination of a 40-day State-wide programme highlighting issues such as price rise, mismanagement of public funds that has been revealed in various scams, and the anarchy and terror tactics being indulged in by the main Opposition party in West Bengal,” Mr. Bose told journalists after a State Left Front meeting.

The campaign will be carried out at the block level in all districts. Simultaneously preliminary preparations for the elections, including strengthening the organisation at the booth level, will be done in this period, he added.

On the incidents of campus violence being witnessed recently in the State, Mr. Bose said: “Student politics should be run by students, but these incidents of campus violence have not been caused by students.”

Claiming that outsiders, particularly senior leaders of the Trinamool Congress, had become involved in student politics, he said the Left Front had undertaken a programme against the anarchy and chaos being unleashed in campuses.

‘More police needed'

Mr. Bose was also critical of the police over the handling of certain law and order situations, saying that they should have been more alert.

Mentioning the incident outside a college at Andul in Howrah district where Swapan Koley, a member of the Student Federation of India, was killed, he said: “On the last day for filing of nomination papers, why were only four policemen present at the spot?”

He also cited the example of the recent killing of seven supporters of the All-India Forward Bloc in separate incidents in Purulia district. ‘Some of the hamlets in which the killings took place are very scattered. More police could have been rushed to the spot,” he said.

(source : The Hindu)