Regardless of that “ominous Leftist hangover” Bengal was raring to develop under Mamata Banerjee, State Chief Minister on Monday told a gathering of industrialists refusing though to budge from her notoriously stated stance of “no acquisition of farm land.”
Addressing more than three hundred foreign and Indian delegates attending the Horasia Asia meeting — first such summit to be held in India — the Chief Minister urged the overseas diaspora to “please come and invest in Bengal,” because her State had “inched several points upwards in terms of ease of doing business.”
She claimed her State was “third in terms of ‘ease’ in doing business,” adding “there is some legacy issues of the previous Left-Front Government that will take some time to wither away.”
Though her Government would “never capture agricultural land forcibly” for industry, it had adequate “land bank” as also that “power bank or the power that is needed for running the industry,” Banerjee said Bengal is the safest destination for the investors as it has a stable Government, with a sound polity and social harmony. Bengal was also the gateway to the north-eastern part of the country and Eastern Asian countries, she maintained adding, “everything is there in the State and we need just your availability” and inviting the delegates from the US, Europe and parts of Asia. With the investment rate touching the nadir during her rule allegedly on account of faulty land policy and political goonda raj Banerjee had vainly been flying in and out of India — to Germany, Singapore, England etc — for investment even as the State’s employment generation programme had dropped and revenue earning had not progressed proportionately.
In a sudden development a delegation of TMC leaders on Monday appealed to the Election Commission of India to conduct simultaneous by-elections for Assembly and parliamentary seats in the State.
Two Assembly and one Parliamentary seat had fallen vacant in Bengal. While elections will be held for the Sabong Assembly seat vacated by former Congress MLA Dr Manas Bhunia who joined the Trinamool Congress after winning the Assembly seat with Left support. The Trinamool is fielding Bhunia’s wife for the seat. Another Assembly seat was vacated after the death of Noapara MLA Madhusudan Ghosh. The Uluberia parliamentary seat fell vacant following the death of former Union Minister Sultan Ahmed.
A delegation of TMC MPs Derek O’Brien and Kalyan Banerjee on Monday met the ECI with an appeal to conduct the elections simultaneously urged the Commission to hold elections “in public interest,” though a section of the opposition felt the Bengal ruling outfit did not want to let the impact of one election fall on the other particularly at a time when BJP was expanding its base in the State.
The memorandum submitted by the MPs said “in the fitness of situation all these three casual vacancies are required to be filled in simultaneously to allow the electorate of those constituencies elect their representatives.”