Trying to shield Buddhadeb, Yechury faces media grilling

NEW DELHI: Abandoned by friends and allies, the CPM on Friday went redder. While the party made desperate attempts at damage control, it faced an Opposition demand to send an all-party delegation to Nandigram, a proposal the Marxists are completely averse to on the spurious ground that it will set a “very unhealthy precedent”.

In the line of fire after the Nandigram bloodbath, the party leadership’s efforts at defending the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government seem to have boomeranged with few takers for the Maoist involvement theory or its justification for government inaction against guilty policemen.

Facing an angry media, CPM polit bureau member Sitaram Yechury at a press conference opposed the demand for a parliamentary team visiting Nandigram saying a law and order problem could not be equated with communal violence and atrocities on dalits. He said the BJP’s demand was unjustified and no such team had visited any state over a law and order issue since 1951.

Given the mood at the press conference, Mr Yechury’s “shield Buddhadeb” exercise was only getting more difficult. Grilled by an angry media over the killings at Nandigram and inaction by the state government against guilty policemen, particularly the district magistrate and superintendent of police, an evasive Mr Yechury said the CBI was probing the issue and would take a decision on that.

On the Governor’s resentment over the police firing, he said that as a constitutional authority he should have conveyed his views to the President or chief minister. For this too he faced the music, as he was asked how a party could be “undemocratic” enough to imply that a governor should not make public utterances.

Mr Yechury, however, reiterated his views and said he agreed with party leader Subhas Chakravarty and Tarit Topdar that in the normal course, a governor conveys such views to the government. He cited the case of former President K R Narayanan expressing his resentment over the Gujarat riots to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The Marxist leader then confronted a question on the CPM taking a “unilateral” decision on police action by saying the decision was taken at an all-party meeting in which the CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc were present. However, the CPI has rejected this claim saying the CPM leadership was justifying police action based on a meeting of local-level leaders and even that did not mention police action.

Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, who visited the CPI headquarters in Kolkata yesterday, had tried to justify the police action. The CPI leaders, including general secretary A B Bardhan, had told the chief minister that it was not in favour of use of force and efforts should be made to restore normalcy.