Maintain decorum in the Assembly: CM tells Oppn

Criticising the Opposition for flouting Assembly’s decorum by attacking her personally, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday that the freedom of speech should not be used in such a way that the democratic fabric is hampered. She maintained that she never made personal attackes on senior leaders like Sonia Gandhi, Jyoti Basu, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, though she had serious political differences with them.

This comes at a time when Speaker Biman Bandyopadhyay on Thursday told the Leader of the Opposition Abdul Mannan that “words that can be used while speaking at street corners cannot be used in the Assembly.”

The Assembly had turned stormy repeatedly in on Thursday afternoon, when Mannan made some remarks to attack Banerjee personally while participating in a debate on the Governor’s speech. Trinamool Congress MLAs shouted whenever he passed any such comments.

The alliance of Congress and CPI(M) had been criticised a lot. Hence, Mannan on Thursday highlighted the time TMC had joined hands with different political parties and subsequently made a personal attack at the Chief Minister saying that she “is multi-talented and whenever Banerjee makes three scratches on a canvas it fetches Rs 10 lakh.” 

He also challenged the claim of the state government of providing 68 lakh jobs in the past five years.

Banerjee entered the debate just after Mannan. She said that she had been visiting the Assembly for the past many years and she was a seven time MP, but she never attacked any leader personally either in Parliament or in the Assembly because this flouts the decorum.

“We may have differences in political ideology. But it doesn’t mean that we will cross all limits to attack someone personally. “I am not against freedom of speech. But it doesn’t means that what we can say in a political platform, we can also say in Assembly,” she said.

She stated: “The people pave the way for us to speak. You all had placed many things before the people ahead of the elections, but the people have just rejected you all. The election results were out just one month ago and they are behaving as if they have bagged two-third majority.” Taking a dig at the Opposition, she said: “Everybody is a thief and they are saints.” 

Banerjee once again attacked the purported alliance of the Congress and CPI(M), saying: “I can speak to Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, but never with CPI(M) as it is against our political ideology. But Congress have compromised with their ideology and joined hands with CPI(M). It would be better if Congress had given their sign board to CPI(M) and the latter could have worked better than Congress.

“They have even joined hands with BJP at many places. The BJP candidate from Bhowanipore Assembly seat had sought votes in favour of the nominee of the alliance and the picture was quite the same in Siliguri as well,” she said, adding that all Leftists are not bad as she is working with some of them and they are doing excellent in terms of the development work.