With CPM workers and offices coming under attack in West Bengal, the lead editorial in the latest issue of party mouthpiece People’s Democracy says the murderous assaults mounted by the Trinamool Congress post-elections would be met with and defeated. “During the decade of the 1970s, the CPM had faced and defeated the semi-fascist terror unleashed by the Congress and other reactionary forces. Thousands of our comrades had been martyred in the struggle and many more thousands were dislocated from their homes.” “Similarly, if the TMC and other reactionary forces wish to once again subvert democracy in West Bengal and to disrupt the peace and stability that Bengal has enjoyed for over three decades, by mounting murderous assaults on the CPM and the Left, this shall be met like the semi-fascist terror was met and defeated,” the editorial says. It claims that the clearest expression of the Trinamool’s anti-democratic character is exposed in the murderous assaults that it has unleashed on the CPM and the Left. “During the period from the announcement of the 15th general elections till today, 40 CPM and 2 Forward Bloc activists have been murdered so far...Clearly, they were seeking to provoke a confrontation and to try and use the consequent developments to demand the intervention of the central government on the excuse of a ‘break down of law and order’ in the state...The TMC chief has already demanded that the central government should act against the state government under Article 355 of our Constitution. This is a classic case of “the pot calling the kettle black”. First mount murderous assaults and then raise the bogey of a law and order breakdown and seek central intervention — this is the politics of the TMC,” it says.

... contd.