Congress hits hard at WB government

New Delhi, Nov 22 (UNI) Hitting hard at the embattled Left Front government in West Bengal, the Congress today asked why it brought the Army to quell a mob of barely 200 in Kolkata yesterday, while treating Nandigram, which witnessed mindless violence and bloodshed, differently.

"In an urban scenario, the State government felt compelled to bring out the Army with barely 200, at the most reported, to be at the streets. Could not the same attention to law and order been given to Nandigram by bringing out the forces with equal fervour and rigour?" AICC Spokesman Abishek Manu Singhvi asked at the routine media conference.

" If incidents in Kolkata justify this action, why should Nandigram be treated differently," he asked, pointing out that law and order and public order had unfortunately dismally failed in Nandigram.

Dr Singhvi said whether it was law and order or public order, both had failed in the context where the primary responsibility of maintaining both was only of the State government.

"We have to ask some difficult questions and the difficult questions which we ask today here or in Parliament are not meant merely as finger pointing. They are meant for introspection and for solutions." he said in his preface before unleashing the hardest-ever criticism of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government over the Nandigram issue relating to acquisition of land to set up Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

Citing the statements of CPI(M) leaders, after several deaths in Nandigram on January three and March 14 , that they had also lost many of the party cadres and also innocent people, Dr Singhvi asked, " if they were innocent, if they were unconnected, why were they killed in police firing? " In this context, he said, " the blood and the life is the same whether it is yours or mine.'' "It is important to say and realise that we are not infallible.

To accept mistakes, to accept errors, to use correctives is not to diminish your self. It is to dignify your self and to improve your self. If excesses have occurred in Nandigram, which according to us are undeniable, incontrovertible, then the process of reconciliation has to start with the process of owning up." More UNI