The Hindu : Buddhadeb hits back at Vajpayee

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Friday, Jul 18, 2003

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Buddhadeb hits back at Vajpayee

By Our Special Correspondent

Kolkata July 17. The West Bengal Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, today countered the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's criticism of the Left Front Government saying that the Prime Minister's utterances reflected the Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign strategy against the Leftists for the parliamentary elections next year.

"The Prime Minister's negative comments about us is actually a part of the BJP's political campaign for the next year's Lok Sabha polls,'' Mr. Bhattacharjee said.

Talking to presspersons here, the Chief Minister said that he could have countered Mr. Vajpayee's criticism against the Leftists on Wednesday at the 150th anniversary of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry had he been given an opportunity. "The Prime Minister's diatribes against us came after I spoke. But, I felt that I should reply to his criticisms as well as clarify certain points to make the record straight.''

Hitting back at the Prime Minister's observation that the communists' dogmatic approach stood in the way of West Bengal's development, he said the communists were opposed to all kinds of dogmas and fundamentalism. "He (Mr. Vajpayee) himself is dependent on fundamentalists. He is holding the hands of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.''

He said "the Prime Minister named Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Vidyasagar and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in the course of his speech but all these great men were humanists and opposed to fundamentalists.''

Mr. Vajpayee, he said had not mentioned even once that the State was free of communalism. "The Prime Minister said Bengal once showed the way to the rest of India but not today. I assert that today Bengal and not Gujarat is showing the way to the country." Commenting on Mr. Vajpayee's observations on Bengal's economy, the Chief Minister said that it was not correct to say that the State had stagnated.

Drawing comparisons with the NDA Government at the Centre, Mr. Bhattacharjee said that while the country had achieved only 4.3 per cent of the targeted eight per cent growth in the Gross Domestic Product, West Bengal had recorded a growth of 7.1 per cent.

The State had surpassed the national average in agriculture and the industrial growth rate.

"The Prime Minister found serious lapses on our part in the case of per capita income but let me point out that we have been able to overcome this to some extent. In Bengal, the per capita income was Rs. 19,416.23 in 2002-03 when the national average for that period stood at Rs. 18,765.'' Mr. Bhattacharjee said Mr. Vajpayee failed to mention that West Bengal had brought down the poverty level from 52 per cent to 26 per cent.

Turning to the issue of unemployment which Mr.Vajapyee said was '' acute'' in Bengal, the chief minster commented: "Should we take it that this problem is less in Uttar Pradesh(UP) especially his constituency, Lucknow? Let us not forget, unemployment is a national problem.'' Besides, the infiltration from the neighboring states such as Bihar,Orissa , UP and the neighboring country Bangladesh has largely been responsible for the rise in unemployeds in Bengal, he elaborated.

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Buddhadeb hits back at Vajpayee