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Laxman, BJP are enemies of humanity: Basu

Rifat Jawaid in Calcutta

West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu has said that any attempt by the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre to invoke Article 356 in the state would result in butchering the country's democratic set-up.

Talking to rediff.com from his Salt Lake residence, the octogenarian politician insisted that West Bengal was the most peaceful state in India.

Commenting on the meeting of the NDA co-ordination committee in Delhi, which criticised Bengal's "deteriorating" law-and-order, Basu remarked, "I have said this earlier. Why doesn't the Vajpayee government look at its own statistics on law and order in different states? Even that will corroborate my statement.

"They say assembly elections cannot be held in a peaceful environment under the Left Front government. But 79 municipal bodies that went to the polls recently witnessed a peaceful and violence-free election."

Basu said he was aware of the NDA's compulsions in trying to dismiss his government. According to him, the nine Members of Parliament of the Trinamul Congress are playing a pivotal role in the drama. "They don't want to lose the support of the Trinamul MPs. Hence the move to appease its leader, Mamata Banerjee."

But the feisty Marxist warned, "Such a move will have drastic ramifications on the national political scene. The Congress did the same mistake of ousting state governments indiscriminately and the entire country knows how heavy a price it has had to pay. The Congress, in its regime, dismissed over 90 state governments. [Jawaharlal] Nehru started this undemocratic trend by ousting Kerala's E M S Namboodiripad government in 1959 followed by Indira Gandhi who dismissed the state government in West Bengal twice in the Seventies. Today you see how that party has been pushed to the brink of oblivion."

Basu was scathing in his criticism of BJP president Bangaru Laxman's suggestion for the immediate declaration of President's rule in Bengal. Calling Laxman and his party 'enemies of humanity', he said the BJP president should have got some assurances from the Centre for the flood victims instead of analysing law and order.

"Isn't it ironical that when 60 per cent of the state's population is reeling under water and scurrying for shelter, Laxman is roaming around making unreasonable demands. He would have done a great service by at least bringing something from the Centre for the marooned people of West Bengal. [But these] are people whose only motive in life is politics, even it is at the cost of human lives," the chief minister said.

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