Mamta asks Centre to play umpire

New Delhi, Aug 1 (UNI) Under bodyline attack for playing the wrong politics, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today faced the fiery bouncers of rival Mamata Banerjee, who said the Centre should caution him for straying into cricket.

Chastising Mr Bhattacharjee for ''mixing politics with sports'', the firebrand Trinamool leader said his ''good vs evil'' reaction to the election of Jagmohan Dalmia as the new president of Cricket Association of Bengal was ''really disturbing''.

''Before the CAB elections, the CM said Mr Dalmia should not contest. And now he is saying he would remove the CAB president,'' Ms Banerjee told reporters here.

Praising Marxist veteran Jyoti Basu for criticising Mr Bhattacharjee, she said the Chief Minister was behaving like a ''dictator''.

''The central government should intervene and caution the CM,'' she said while denying she knew Mr Dalmia, who defeated Bhattacharjee nominee and Kolkata Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee.

Ms Banerjee also flayed the Chief Minister for signing a deal with the Indonesian Salim Group saying about 40,000 acres of agricultural land would be lost because of the agreement.

''There is already a crisis in food production in the state because of loss of lakhs of acres of agricultural land. This deal will aggravate the situation,'' she said.

Ms Banerjee also attacked the state government for issuing a letter to Trinamool MLA Partha Chatterjee recognising him as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly ''temporarily'' from July 26.

''How can an Opposition leader be recognised as a temporary Opposition leader? Is there a temporary Prime Minister in a democracy?'' she asked.

Ms Banerjee said her party, which is the single largest Opposition party, does not have the required 10 per cent membership of the state Assembly for becoming eligible for Opposition leader's post, but that was because one of its MLAs died.

''Unfortunately one of our MLAs died and we can win that seat when byelection is held,'' she said.

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