Das Munshi floats new outfit

By Our Special Correspondent

CALCUTTA, MAY 14. The West Bengal Congress(I) working president, Mr. P.R. Das Munshi, appears to have stoked the current intra- party strife by floating a new outfit - Secular Democratic Front.

In party circles, this was viewed as an attempt to counter his detractors, Mr. A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury, State president and Mr. Somen Mitra, former president, and their supporters who have come together to thwart him.

Mr. Das Munshi, who ceremonially inaugurated the Secular Democratic Front on Saturday, expressed the hope that it would help regain the minorities' confidence in the Congress(I) president, Ms. Sonia Gandhi.

According to observers, Mr. Das Munshi floated the outfit in an obvious attempt to recover the grounds lost to the Khan Choudhury-Mitra combine who succeeded in re-establishing their anti-CPI(M) credentials by favouring the mahajot or grand alliance with the Railway Minister, Ms. Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress.

He has no other option but to try and promote his secular credentials to counter his rivals within. An experienced politician, he knows that he can no longer hope to score a point by describing them as ``communist-friendly'' especially when Ms. Banerjee herself has acknowledged their anti-CPI(M) credentials.

Mr. Das Munshi and his followers embarked on projecting their secular image when they found that their campaign against the Khan Choudhury-Mitra combine as communist- friendly turned out to be counter-productive. Moreover, he started suspecting the Das Munshi camp's intentions to fight the ruling communists as the former opposed any association between the Congress(I) and Ms. Banerjee.

He realised that he would have to act fast to counter his opponents. He missed the mahajot bus alright but he still has his secular credentials to fall back on.

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