Kolkata, Nov 16 (IANS) Noted Bengali singer Kabir Suman, who is now a Trinamool Congress MP, has said that he did not see any difference between West Bengal’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the opposition in misusing funds allocated for development work, causing much embarrassment to his party.
“I don’t see any difference between the CPI-M and the opposition parties in misusing funds allocated for the development of the poor. Everyone is concerned about their own political gain and nothing else,” Suman said during the launch of a Bengali daily, Adivasi Sangbad, at Kolkata Press Club Sunday evening.

Terming himself a “party slave”, the newly elected Lok Sabha member said: “Don’t call me an MP. I am not a political person. I joined politics responding to the call of a mass movement.

“I will be very happy if my Lok Sabha membership is cancelled. I will also be happy if I don’t have to contest any further Lok Sabha elections,” the singer said, lashing out at the ways of all mainstream political parties.

“People should raise thousands of questions as to why there’s no development. I can say from my personal experience in South 24-Parganas district that there’s no development,” said Suman, who trounced CPI-M veteran Sujan Chakraborty from the district’s Jadavpur constituency in the April-May general elections.

“Those who were earlier running the panchayat of South 24-Parganas did nothing for the benefit of poor. But the question should also be raised; those who have come to power now, what have they done for them (the poor)?” he said.

The zilla parishad, upper tier of the three-level panchayat system, of South 24 Parganas district is controlled by Suman’s Trinamool Congress, which ousted the Left Front in the rural body polls last year.