Deb tries Asok pill, Cong rejects it - TMC tells all to join hands against Left

TT, Siliguri, Oct. 9: Gautam Deb today sounded remarkably similar to rival Asok Bhattacharya when he requested all elected non-Trinamul representatives of the Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad to shun the Left and join the ruling party.

During the campaign for the rural mahakuma elections, Bhattacharya, the mayor of Siliguri who is a senior CPM leader, had requested the electorate to vote for anyone but Trinamul.

Deb, whose party suffered a setback in the elections that the Left won, said the Congress had already "surrendered to the CPM".

He appealed to what he called the "conscientious people in the Congress" telling them not to forget "the sacrifices of their former leaders and workers, who had fought against the CPM's atrocities". At a news conference in the Darjeeling district Trinamul office, he said: "We appeal to them to join hands with Trinamul on the issue of development. They can join Trinamul or stay as an ally. We would like to make a similar request to elected representatives of all other anti-Left parties to stand by us and form boards at the panchayat samitis and gram panchayats together to stop the Left."

The October 7 results of the three-tier polls have shown that 11 of the 22 panchayats and two of four panchayat samitis are hung as no party alone has secured the magic figure. To form a board, a party needs to get half plus one of the total seats. Or the party can go into an understanding for support from other parties and Independents.

The Left, which had an informal understanding with the Congress, yesterday proposed a formal alliance with the party to keep Trinamul at bay. "We could form boards in most of the panchayats and in both the panchayat samitis which are hung by allying with Congress. Our only intention is to keep Trinamul away from power," Bhattacharya said yesterday.

An understanding between the Left and the Congress can allow them to form boards in at least six of the 11 hung panchayats and in one of the two hung panchayat samitis.

District Congress leaders today rejected Deb's proposal. "He (Deb) should first apologise to Congress workers, whom his party workers attacked and terrorised ahead of the elections. False police cases were slapped on our workers. We are well aware of our stand and our conscience is also very clear," said Shankar Malakar, the Darjeeling district Congress president, who is also the MLA of Matigara-Naxalbari. "There is no question of joining hands with Trinamul to form boards in the two lower tiers."

After the statement by the CPM's Bhattacharya yesterday, Malakar had said his party would think about the proposal once it receives it in writing from the Left.

The BJP said the party leadership had told its "elected representatives at the two lower tiers to make the decision on their own" for the sake of development.