West Bengal CPIM places its mite behind Buddhadeb

KOLKATA: West Bengal CPIM has placed its mite behind chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, but not all partners of the ruling coalition.

This was imminent on Monday during Bhattacharjee���s cabinet core committee meeting when RSP leader and PWD minister Kshiti Goswami objected to the chief minister visiting districts and questioned Bhattacharjee���s touring these places alone.

Bhattacharjee, on Sunday, visited Hooghly district and held talks with senior district officials, MLAs and ministers from the district. His intention was to speed up various developmental projects.

Goswami told reporters after the core committee meeting that he had raised the issue of chief minister���s visit to the districts. "There is no need to have the cabinet core committee if the chief minister himself takes unilateral decisions on various issues and starts implementing his decisions. I also urged the chief minister to form a team of ministers and assigned it to tour the districts to take stock of various pending development projects and the chief minister has agreed to it."

The other Left Front partners, the CPI and Forward Bloc, also supported Goswami and it has been decided that a team of ministers will visit West Midnapore soon to take stock of the situation there.

Goswami also observed that the Left Front government under Jyoti Basu���s tenure used to send its team of ministers to different districts and this worked well to solve the various administrative problems. "But, the system was later discontinued and we want it back again," the RSP leader said.

Bhattacharjee had recently visited Hooghly and Nadia districts after his party cleared his plan to tour throughout West Bengal mainly to repair the damage done to it during the Lok Sabha elections. But, after Monday���s decision taken at the core committee, Bhattacharjee may not visit districts alone, but allow his cabinet team to carry out the job on his behalf.

CM���s letter to PM:

Meanwhile, Bhattacharjee has written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh requesting him to take initiatives to reopen the closed industrial units in the state, specially those run by the union government.