Mamata refuses to meet Bharati Tamang

Mamata refuses to meet Bharati Tamang

11 October 2011

SILIGURI, 11 OCT: The chief minister, Miss Mamata Banerjee, refused to meet the All India Gorkha League president, Mrs Bharati Tamang, today despite several attempts by the leadership of the oldest Hill-based party. “I felt humiliated and it is difficult for me to express my feelings in words,” Mrs Tamang said.  
It has been learnt from AIGL leaders that Mrs Tamang sought an appointment with the chief minister today through the Darjeeling district magistrate, Mr Saumitra Mohan.
Notably, Mrs Tamang, the widow of the slain AIGL president, Madan Tamang, has been seeking an appointment with Miss Banerjee since she became the chief minister in May this year. “I have been trying tirelessly to meet the chief minister to seek justice for the daylight assassination of my husband. The CBI probe seems to have got stuck at a point perhaps owing to political intervention from the highest levels. I went to Kolkata around two months back and sought an appointment with the chief minister. But the same indifference befell me. But I am determined to carry on with my struggle for justice, come what may. I would not rest till the criminals involved in the murder are brought to justice,” she asserted.  
She said that the Darjeeling district magistrate had told her that the chief minister was too pre-occupied to talk to her. “Is this democracy? The chief minister has no time to talk to the president of the principal Opposition party in the Hills while staying in Darjeeling. This smacks of bad manners and the trend is dangerous for participatory democracy,” she said.  
Taking strong exception to the development, the senior CPI-M leader and Rajya Sabha MP from the Darjeeling Hills, Mr Saman Pathak, said that the present government’s undemocratic style of functioning had been exposed. “The ruthless face of the chief minister has emerged from the façade of democratic pretension. The refusal to meet the leader of the oldest political party in the Hills amounts to gagging the democratic voice of dissent. To appease a particular party while keeping the Opposition at bay would perpetuate anarchy in the politically restive Hills,” the Marxist leader said.  
Echoing the Marxist sentiment, a senior leader of the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists, Mr Taramoni Rai, said that the chief minister had been hobnobbing with those accused in the Madan Tamang murder case. sns