Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Sunday said the CPM and Maoists were two sides of the same coin, and asked the Centre to take action against “the state government-sponsored terror in Bengal”.

“Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has a double face. Both the CPM and Maoists are two sides of the same coin and are unleashing terror. If the Maoists are banned, why not the CPM? There is no difference between Maoists and Marxists,” she stated.

Speaking to mediapersons at her Kalighat residence here on Sunday, Mamata said 69 per her party workers had been killed while several were missing. “Every day, our workers are being killed in different parts of the state... I have given all the evidence to the Union Home Minister on the violence unleashed by armed CPM cadres. The state government has failed to control the law and order situation. Now, it is for them (Centre) to take action.”

Denying any links with the Maoists, the Trinamool chief said: “If it had been so, our panchayat pradhan Nishikanto Mondol would not have been killed in Nandigram.”

Speaking at a felicitation ceremony for singer Manna Dey, who was recently named for the Dadasaheb Phalke award, in Kolkata, ex-chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray and former CPM leader Somnath Chatterjee also criticised the state government, saying development of the state needed to be put before politics.

Speaking about the current problems in the state, Ray, who famously led what some called a brutal crackdown to crush the Naxalite movement in West Bengal in the early ‘70s, said tribal problems cannot be solved through police activity.

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