No sympathy for Mollah from Buddha, Nirupam
While the Left parties led by CPI(M) have erupted in protest in the wake of the attack on former minister and Left veteran Abdur Rezzak Mollah, comrades Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Nirupam Sen were notable absentees in the delegation of Left Front leaders led by chairman Biman Bose, who called on their comrade at the private hospital on EM Bypass on Monday.
While the Left parties led by CPI(M) have erupted in protest in the wake of the attack on former minister and Left veteran Abdur Rezzak Mollah, comrades Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Nirupam Sen were notable absentees in the delegation of Left Front leaders led by chairman Biman Bose, who called on their comrade at the private hospital on EM Bypass on Monday.
The move to keep away from the courtesy call to the former land and land reforms minister hasn’t gone down too well within a section of Alimuddin, with party insiders claiming that a visit to the hospital and a few words of comfort to their infirm comrade could have gone a long way in repairing frayed ties with the Left veteran. Mollah, the longest sitting CPI(M) MLA going back 40 years, had reportedly fallen foul of a section of his party bosses and hadn’t been pally with the politburo veterans just lately.
A staunch critic of both the former chief minister and industries minister, Rezzak was among the first to set off the trend of dissidence in the Marxist ranks in the wake of the washout in the Assembly elections of 2011. A pro-farmer voice in the CPI(M) ranks, Rezzak had publicly slammed the duo for taking an anti-farmer line, which saw the Left Front cede power to Trinamool Congress a 34-year uninterrupted tenure in the state.
Without taking any names, Mollah trained a stinging barb at the former chief minister post the poll defeat, saying, “Hele shap dhorte janena geche keute dhorte (what to say about people who can’t catch an innocuous snake and yet attempts to grab a cobra).
Again, without naming the former industries minister, Mollah went on record to say, “Otai nater guru. O harbe puro biswa janto. (He is the leader of the gang. His defeat (in the Assembly polls) was inevitable and the whole world knew it.”
Quizzed earlier on whether he would call on his ailing comrade, Sen said, “I am ailing and won’t be able make it to the hospital (to visit Mollah). I couldn’t even go to the party headquarters (at Alimuddin Street) today.
I returned to Kolkata just yesterday from North Bengal. However, other senior Left Front leaders would pay him a visit at the hospital.”
Quizzed on the former chief minister keeping away, Sujan Chakraborty, district CPI(M) secretary in the South 24-Parganas, said, “Buddhababu isn’t keeping well and won’t be at the hospital. But he has been taking regular updates on Rezzakda’s health. He sent Suryakanta Mishra and other senior leaders to visit him at the hospital.”
In a related development, the top CPI(M) leadership alleged that the top brass of the ruling party were stepping up pressure on the hospital management to have Mollah discharged by Monday.
“He was taken to the hospital’s laboratory by a wheel chair for pathological investigations. Doctors attending on him told us that the patient would have to stay in the hospital for few days more for observation.
But shortly after being wheeled in to the laboratory, doctors decided to discharge him on Monday. We believe the top Trinamool leaders are pressuring them into discharging Rezzakda as soon as possible,” Chakraborty said.