Veteran communist Jyoti Basu is the person to be blamed for the underdevelopment and resulting unrest in the three forest dominated districts of Bengal, Politburo member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) Kishenji said on Saturday.
Kishenji sent an eight-page fax on Saturday night to newspaper offices to contradict Trinamool Congress Mamata Banerjee’s position via-a-vis the Maoists in Bengal.
According to Kishenji, the architect of the Maoist strategy in Bengal and three other states (Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa), Bhattacharjee is not the only person responsible for the violence in the forest-dominated areas of Bengal.
“The main culprit is Jyoti Basu. He is a negative model of communist movement in the whole country. This is why Basu is such a favourite of the bourgeois zamindars,” said the statement from the Maoist leader.
“This is why the whole ruling class of the country comes to visit him if he is ill,” Kishenji commented.
The former chief minister and CPM patriarch is battling for life in a Kolkata hospital. Basu’s condition was marginally better on Sunday, though he continued to remain critical, doctors attending on him said.
“His general condition is marginally better than yesterday, but still critical and he is on partial ventilation,” executive director of private AMRI hospital D.N. Agarwal told reporters on Sunday.
On Saturday evening, Mamata Banerjee had criticised the Centre for being soft on the West Bengal government even though it had failed to contain the Maoists.
More than 100 lives were lost in Maoist violence in 2009 since June 18 in three districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura.
“Who is Kishenji? We can drive them out of Bengal,” Mamata had said on Saturday.