A very defensive West Bengal chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee said on Saturday that he would be considering banning the CPI (Maoist) organization following Naxal violence in the state.
In a statement which provoked an adverse reaction from his party, the CPI(Marxist), Bhattacharjee said, "Home Minister Chidamabarm advised me to ban this
organisation. We have to give it a serious thought." Bhattacharjee was in Delhi for the CPI(M) central committee meeting and met with both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and home minister P Chidambaram.
Meanwhile, the CPI(M)'s central committee meeting which was supposed to be a self critical review of its performance in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, turned out to be an exercise in politically managing the fall out of the Maoist violence in Lalgarh in West Bengal.
In a statement released by the party, the Maoist violence was termed as "part of a wider gameplan by powerful vested interests" to destroy the party in its bastion of West Bengal."In Lalgarh, the Maoist gang with backing of the Trinamool Congress has created a zone of terror against CPI(M) supporters. Maoist leaders in the area have openly spoken about their contacts to the Trinamool-led alliance in all the developments in Nandigram," the party alleged.
In the meeting Finance Minister of Kerala, Dr. TM Thomas Isaac asked Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan be removed as he spoke against the party General Secretary and also failed to defend the party's four-year old alliance with Abdul Nazar Madani of PDP.
Party General Secretary Prakash Karat also did not escape unscathed as some leaders felt that it was the Left's withdrawal of support to the UPA that forced the Congress into an alliance with the Trinamool Congress.
