CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim, who met Rahul in Raghunathganj along with the party’s central committee member, Sujan Chakraborty and other leaders, said the Left party joined the Congress Yatra to be part of its fight against RSS-BJP and injustice.
“We are fighting against the RSS-BJP. Rahul Gandhi also came out with Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra to combat RSS-BJP. We are fighting to save democracy in India. We came here to show our solidarity to this Yatra,” Salim said after the 45-minute-long meeting with Rahul.
Claiming that TMC was eager to deboard the opposition INDIA bloc ‘train’, Salim said: “A lot of people boarded a train from the originating station, but one cannot say who will continue to be part of the fight against the BJP and who deboard en route. Mamata Banerjee now wants to get down from the train and we welcome it.”
Hitting out at the TMC chief for alleging that the CPI(M) was trying to control the Opposition bloc’s agenda, Salim said: “The Congress is a very big pan-India party. Does CPI(M) have such strength? But still, she is saying that CPI(M) is controlling the Congress.”
“The country is at present divided between justice and injustice. We have come to join this fight against injustice,” he added.
He said that while the real fight is for jobs and farmers’ problems, some parties are doing politics over religion. “2024 is a year of struggle for India to decide whether federal structure, secularism, parliamentary democracy will continue to remain in the country. The battle lines have been drawn… We who believe in secularism and federal structure are on one side to save parliamentary democracy. On the other side, the BJP is using central agencies and corruption cases to increase the strength of the NDA,” he said.
Claiming that the yatra has been facing obstacles while traversing through Assam and West Bengal, Salim said, “We condemn such obstacles as this is not our political culture.”
CPI(M)’s Murshidabad district secretary Jamir Mollah and CPI(M) state committee member Shatarup Ghosh were also present in the meeting. Ghosh had joined the Yatra on Wednesday at Debipur in Malda district. During Rahul Gandhi’s first leg of Yatra in Bengal, CPI(M) leaders like Jibesh Sarkar walked with Rahul in Siliguri.
“The meeting took place in a very cordial atmosphere. We are very optimistic. Rahul Gandhi expressed his unhappiness over what the TMC did during his Yatra. What happened in Assam was expected but what happened in Bengal was beyond expectation,” a senior Left leader said.
On Thursday, the Yatra began from Sujapur in Malda district from where veteran Congress leader late ABA Gani Khan Choudhury used to get elected. Choudhury was first elected as an MLA from Sujapur in 1967. Later, he became MP and Union railways minister. In 2021, for the first time the Congress lost Sujapur to the TMC.
Thousands of people lined along the road to greet Rahul as the Yatra entered Murshidabad district from Farakka. The Yatra travelled more than 100 km to reach Berhampore, the Lok Sabha constituency of state Congress unit president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. Throughout the roads, there were huge cutouts of Rahul, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge were seen.
The ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’, which started in Manipur on January 14, is scheduled to cover 6,713 km in 67 days, while passing through 110 districts in 15 states, before culminating in Mumbai on March 20.
Covering 523 km across six West Bengal districts so far, the yatra has traversed Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, and Uttar Dinajpur, with Malda and Murshidabad slated for the second phase.
—With PTI Inputs