Kolkata, Oct 17 (IANS) Inability to solve the real problems of the people has prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to drag the army and the Durga Puja festival respectively in their bid to reap political dividends, the CPI-M said on Monday.
"They have failed to keep any of their promises to remove unemployment and poverty. So they are now bringing out their hidden trump cards. They are trying to use the Durga carnival or the surgical strikes carried out by the Indian army in terrorist hideouts of Pakistan as trump cards to cling on to power," Communist Party of India-Marxist State Secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said at a programme here.
Likening the parade of Durga idols organised by Banerjee and Modi's "communal speech" in Lucknow with US presidential candidate Donald Trump's anti-immigrant venom-spewing speeches, Mishra said the dictatorial similarities had their origin in the financial mess the country has got into.
Describing Banerjee as one who always behaved like fascists, Mishra said, "This time she has shown that she won't even spare the Durga Puja. The large number of Durga puja marquees inaugurated by her made it seem that the festival can't start till she was there."
"And then, the Durga idols were kept waiting on the roads before immersion till she gave the nod to take them for immersion," Mishra said tongue-in-cheek.
He claimed that the communal tension was rising in Bengal due to the "politics of the Chief Minister" "who wanted to keep the people engrossed in jamborees to keep their mind off her failures and unkept promises".
"We have to rally all secular forces on a bigger platform. And we need to build up struggles for life and livelihood to strengthen the left democratic alternative," he said.
