Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 20 (IANS) The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Thursday sought union Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s intervention to prevent Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee from “deliberately stoking” communal trouble in West Bengal ahead of the May 30 civic body elections.
CPI-M leaders Sitaram Yechury and Basudeb Acharia met Chidambaram and handed over Left Front chairman Biman Bose’s letter addressed to the minister, in which he alleges that “Mamata is deliberately stoking panic and terror amongst the Muslim minority population claiming that she has secret information that a section of the police will help the Left Front in unleashing communal violence in the state”.

Both Yechury and Acharia, who are leaders of the party in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, respectively, sought Chidambaram’s intervention saying that a serious situation is developing in the state “in the course of the current election campaign to municipal corporations in West Bengal”.

Elections to 82 municipalities in West Bengal, including for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, would be held May 30.

Biman Bose’s letter said that during the last 33 years of the Left Front rule, the state and its people have seen unprecedented communal harmony and fraternity.

He said casting such “wild and unsubstantiated allegations, especially by a union cabinet minister, also violates the provisions of the Representation of People Act, 1951″.

The Left Front leader requested the home minister to obtain the secret information which he said Mamata possesses, and act on it in consultation with the state government.

“If on the contrary, there is no such information, as surely is the case, then may we request you to set at rest the apprehensions and tensions that have resulted from the union minister’s utterances,” the letter added.