Without naming the Trinamool Congress, the lead editorial in the latest issue of CPI(M) mouthpiece People’s Democracy alleges that union ministers are leading and participating in the violence in Lalgarh in West Bengal in gross violation of the Constitution. “It is a gross abuse of Indian parliamentary democracy that those who have taken oath under the constitution to serve as ministers in the central government are, themselves, leading and participating in the most unconstitutional and illegal orgy of violence resulting in large-scale loss of human life and destruction of property. The Congress party heading the central government, far from being uncomfortable, is an accomplice in this gross violation of the Indian constitution.” “The earlier violence unleashed by this anti-Communist alliance in Singur and Nandigram helped the Maoists to entrench themselves. However, unlike in Nandigram, where the Maoists were operating behind the Trinamool banner, now in Lalgarh, it is the Trinamool Congress that is openly aiding and abetting the Maoists to unleash such violence,” it claims.

It says for the past few years, the Maoists had been accumulating arms through raids on ordinance factories and police outposts. The article quotes a defence journal report about seizure of a massive cache of arms by the Indian Army in Bengal in 2006 and subsequent media reports which said the arms were meant for Maoist rebels.

“The West Bengal state government has asked for central assistance in dealing with this situation. The central and state governments must urgently act in unison, in the interests of the country and its constitutional scheme of things, to immediately restore normalcy in both East and West Midnapore districts of West Bengal and reestablish the rule of law and civic administration,” it says.

... contd.