Kolkata, Nov.15 (ANI): Communist Party of India (Marxist) has blamed the State’s main opposition Trinamool Congress (TMC) party of supporting the Maoist rebels.

Biman Bose, State Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist) for West Bengal,

Biman Bose on Sunday said that Mamta Banjerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) party activists hobnobbed with the Maoists.

“Trinamool party has been saying that Marxists are the same as Maoists. Has any Marxist participated in a meeting of the Maoists with Chhattradhar Mahato in Lalgarh? No Marxist went for the meeting, it was in fact the Trinamool party that participated in the meeting and that too more than once,” Biman Bose told a news conference in state capital Kolkata.

However, speaking on the recent debacle in the assembly by-elections, Biman Bose ruled out early polls in the state.

“Elections are scheduled for 2011, the mandate is till 2011 and we have not discussed anything on advancing the elections neither in the party not in the state unit,” Bose said.

CPI (M)-led Left parties lost key seats in elections held in two of their heartland states this month, weakening them further and paving the way for the ruling Congress government to speed up reforms.

West Bengal, which has been ruled by the communists since 1977, is going to the polls in 2011 to elect a new 294-member assembly and could well lose the elections, experts say. (ANI)