Industrialisation:FB meets CPM to voice swelling discontent

Kolkata, Jan 10(UNI) In a move that could have a bearing on the ruling Left Front, the Forward Bloc met the big brother CPI(M) in a bipartite meeting here today to voice its swelling discontent over wooing of capital and the drive for industrialisation in West Bengal.

"We shall give in writing to the CPI(M) our views and proposals...they will also let us know their views," Forward Bloc state Secretary Ashok Ghosh told reporters after the meeting.

He said said another round of meeting would be held between the two parties on January 18 before taking up the issues for discussion in the next Left Front meeting.

Today's meeting took place two days after the Forward Bloc, RSP and the CPI-- the triumvirate known as a mini-front within the ruling Left Front-- said they would not accept the CPI(M)'s 'surrender' to big capital and the 'whims of the corporate empire'.

Even as Mr.Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the state's Marxist Chief Minister, had publicly declared the inevitability of pursuing the capitalist path for industrialisation, the smaller partners had been up in arms against him and the CPI(M) allegedly for digressing from the basic tenets of Communism and toeing the line of the Congres-led UPA and the NDA, headed by the BJP.

The main objections of three of the smaller partners, particularly the Forward Bloc and the RSP, were against the way industrialists were being allowed to dictate terms while setting up their units and the way the government was being run 'unilaterally' by the CPI(M).

"We won't allow any particular party to run the front and government in our name and impose its decisions on us, ignoring our opinions," Mr.Ghosh had said on Tuesday last.

The constituents also have serious differences with the CPI(M) on issues like setting up of SEZ and inviting retail business in the state.

The rift with the CPI(M) had already made the Forward Bloc to decide to contest the next year's Panchayat elections on its own--for the first time in the past 30 years.

The row over industrialization within the Left Front burst out in the open when Mr. Ghosh threatened not to allow the Tatas' small car factory on fertile soil, while addressing a rally at Singur.

Charging the chief minister with 'bluffing and misleading' the coalition partners about land acquisition in Singur, the veteran leader, who was one of the founders of the Left Front, also said his party would never accept the 'sycophancy' being indulged in by Mr.Bhattacharjee and his government to rope in industrialists.

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