Sending central team tantamount to invoking Art 355: Mamata

The Centre's decision to send a team to West Bengal "to assess the situation" was as good as warning the state under Article 355, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee today said, while sticking to her demand for imposition of president's rule.

Article 355 of the Constitution states, "It shall be the duty of the Union to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.”

However, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee declined to comment on the visit of the Central team to the state.

"Sending a Central team to assess the situation in the state is tantamount to invoking Article 355 to teach the State government to perform its rajdharma," Banerjee told reporters here on the eve of the arrival of the central team.

"The visit of a central team means that law and order has collapsed and there is a constitutional breakdown in the state," she said.

Quoting Union home minister P Chidambaram's statement in Lok Sabha that Article 356 could not be misused, she said "none of us want its misuse. We won the Lok Sabha and other elections without president's rule...We want imposition of Article 356 in the state to stop state-sponsored terror."

Article 356 empowers the Union to proclaim an emergency, dismissing the state legislature and the executive, in case of a breakdown of the “constitutional machinery” in that state.

Meanwhile, the chief minister today declined to comment on the issue by shaking his head, while leaving CPI(M) state headquarters at the end of the party's two-day state committee meeting.

The decision to send a three-member Central team followed major UPA ally Trinamool Congress' demand, which alleged that the CPI(M) had unleashed a 'reign of terror' in the state.