News4u-News Desk-Taking on the CPI(M) in its bastion, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused it of looting central funds meant for the poor and said the days of the Marxists in West Bengal were numbered.
“There are two Bengals. One belongs to the CPI(M) where there is money and glitter and the other belongs to you and me where there is darkness and backwardness and where there is no prosperity, employment, roads and electricity,” he said.
This was Gandhi’s first public rally in the metropolis and the crowd applauded every time he attacked the CPI(M) in his brief but hard hitting speech.
Assembly elections in the state are due next year.
Alleging that the CPI(M) had been indulging in loot of central funds meant for the poor for the last 33 years, Gandhi said, “The Centre has been giving money worth crores of rupees to Bengal under NREGA and other schemes, but the money is being siphoned off by the CPI-M and not reaching the beneficiaries. The fund is going to the CPI(M) coffers.”
“45 percent of the people in West Bengal do not have even ration cards,” he said adding CPI-M did not pay any heed to the needs of the common men, but worked for the benefit of the party.
“The day is not far off when the CPI(M) will be uprooted from the state,” he said.
“The 70 or 80-year-old ideology of the Communists, which has become obsolete in the rest of the world, still exists in West Bengal and this exists for the CPI(M) too. This is not for you,” he told the rally at Shahid Minar.
“The question is not whether CPI(M) remains in Bengal. That decision has already been taken by the people. The question is what we can do for the youth and I have been given an opportunity in the party in which youth find a place.”
Pointing out that the Youth Congress membership in Tamil Nadu had increased from 35,000 to 14.5 lakh after his visit to the state, he said the Dravidian parties were now wondering how this became possible.
Asserting that a similar thing would happen in West Bengal in the next four to five months, Gandhi appealed to the youths of the state to work united to strengthen the organisation.
Charging the CPI(M) with ignoring the poor and the downtrodden, he advised the youth of Bengal to come back to the path of progress.
Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee expressed the hope that Gandhi’s leadership would give a boost to the Congress party in the state.
“We will have to stand beside Rahul, the new generation Congress leader, in his endeavour to strengthen the party in UP, Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu which account for 40 percent of Lok Sabha seats,” he said.
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