Left Front, BJP, Congress, AISF to boycott all-party meeting on Bengal Statehood Day

Kolkata, Aug 28 (IANS) The BJP, Left Front, Congress and All India Secular Front (AISF) have decided to boycott an all-party meeting on Tuesday convened by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on announcing Poila Boishakh (Bengali New Year’s Day) as the “Statehood Day".

The proposed meeting is also slated to discuss the selection of a song as the “State Song” for West Bengal.

While the BJP has announced its decision to boycott the meeting through press briefings, the Left Front chairman in West Bengal Biman Bose had sent a communique to the Chief Minister’s Secretariat on Monday expressing the inability of the Left Front allies to participate in the meeting.

“West Bengal was forked out by dividing undivided Bengal. That was never a happy moment for the millions of displaced people because of the partition. So we do not believe in celebrating any particular day as the Statehood Day. Similarly, we objected to the Governor C.V. Ananda Bose organszing an event as West Bengal Foundation Day on June 20 this year,” Bose told mediapersons on Monday.

Explaining their rationale behind celebrating Bengali New Year’s Day as the Statehood Day, the BJP’s state spokesman Samik Bhattacharya said that they were against it since there was no scientific or historical perspective behind the decision of the state government.

“We do not want to be a party in the ploy of the state government to mislead people in the name of Statehood Day celebration,” he said.

Meanwhile, state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury also said that there will be no representation from his party in Tuesday's meeting.

“Had the meeting been called on the law and order situation in the state, we surely would have sent our representative. But sending representatives to Tuesday's meeting is a simple waste of time,” Chowdhury said.

Naushad Siddique, the lone AISF representative in the state Assembly, said that he has not been invited to the meeting.

“The question of deciding on whether to attend the meeting or not comes only if I had been invited. There is no question of going to the meeting uninvited,” he said.

--IANS

src/ksk