Agartala: Hours after Prime Minister Modi ended his short trip to poll-bound Tripura where he addressed two rallies to pitch for the saffron party candidates, former Chief Minister and Leader of the Opposition Manik Sarkar claimed that the Prime Minister was boasting of works that had been mostly started when the Left Front was in power.
Sarkar even went on to allege that the BJP was trying to steal credit for the work done by the predecessor government in order to show off its achievements.
“PM Modi’s 37-minute long address largely dwelt on development works carried out by the Left Front government rather than what they had delivered in the last five years. He did not even bother to mention the vision document that they had released before the 2018 assembly elections. Regularization of casual employees, reinstatement of 10,323 sacked teachers, none of those issues could get any space in the Prime Minister’s addresses,” the senior member of the politburo said.
Holding the BJP responsible for the retrenchment of 10,323 teachers, Sarkar said, “It is the people from BJP who are responsible for the plight of the 10,323 teachers. When the previous Left Front government tried to rehabilitate the victimised teachers in the Education and Social Welfare department, they moved to the Supreme Court and succeeded in getting a stay order on the recruitment drive. The 7th Central pay commission that they had promised in the ‘vision document’ also turned out to be false. People got ensnared in the trap of allurements even though we tried to warn everyone.”
The veteran CPI(M) leader, who has opted out from the elections this time, also claimed that although projects such as national highways, new airport terminal might have been completed in recent times, but the critical procedural approvals for those projects to start were cleared when the Left was in power.
“There was only one national highway. Eight new highways were sanctioned due to our consistent pressure on the Central government. The new terminal building of the airport became a reality because the then government completed the land acquisition and helped the Centre to start construction works as soon as possible,” he added.
Taking a jibe at PM Modi’s lawlessness comment, he said, “The Left Front government never tried to take the credit for neutralizing the insurgency in the state. The formation of Tripura State Rifles, increasing the number of police stations in sensitive areas and building a strong public opinion against the armed rebellion to restore peace and tranquility of the state was the biggest success of the Left Front. Even the Central government and the Prime Minister himself recognized the work of the Left Front in putting a stop to militancy that killed over 350 of our cadres, including former health minister of the state Bimal Sinha.”
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Alleging that Prime Minister Modi has been shedding crocodile tears for the tribals, the veteran leader said, “He said BJP won all the tribal seats of Gujarat. Let me clarify, the BJP has won the elections of Gujarat by dividing people in the name of religion, caste, and other fault lines. Do they have any autonomous bodies like the TTAADC? It was the long struggle of Left parties that bent down the Indira Gandhi-led Central government to approve the establishment of TTAADC in the state.”
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