Congress colluding with CPI-M to attack Trinamool: Mamata Banerjee

KOLKATA: As the Congress in West Bengal today threatened to intensify its agitation over the proposed renaming of Indira Bhavan at Salt Lake, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee alleged the Congress was colluding with the CPI(M) to attack her party.

''In West Bengal, the CPI(M) and the Congress are working together. Our partymen are being attacked at places like Keshpur and Garbeta,'' Banerjee said while reacting to protest-agitations by Congress workers over the Indira Bhavan issue.

The government has proposed to rename Indira Bhavan, where late prime Minister Indira Gandhi stayed during the 1972 AICC session and hence the name, after rebel poet Kavi Nazrul Islam.

Banerjee, the state's chief minister, alleged the Congress cadres were carrying out a campaign of vilification.

''Some men of the Congress are carrying out campaign on the Indira Bhavan issue. They (Congress) are blocking roads and railway tracks daily and abusing me daily. But I have not uttered anything against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or against Sonia Gandhi,'' she said.

Banerjee pointed out that the building was a state guest house where the late Marxist leader Jyoti Basu had stayed for more than a decade till his death.

Congressmen were now agitating, but they were silent when the house was used as a CPI(M) party office when Jyoti Basu was staying there, she reminded Congress, Trinamool's ally in the government.