Mamata

Calcutta, Nov. 5: Mamata Banerjee will march from College Square to the Metro Channel in Calcutta at noon on Monday, holding traffic hostage in the central business district on the first weekday.

Trinamul Congress sources said the padayatra was part of Mamata’s larger movement against “the CPM’s terror tactics”. She announced last week that her party might call a statewide bandh as a last resort if the “CPM’s atrocities are not stopped immediately”.

“Mamata will lead a procession on Monday in the city to protest the CPM’s unbridled terror across Bengal,” Sudip Bandopadhyay, the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, said today.

Although Mamata was present at her Kalighat home all day, she asked Bandopadhyay to brief the media about the march as she was busy giving the Union home ministry an update on how CPM activists blocked her convoy on the way to Arambagh to address a rally yesterday.

Today, Partha Chatterjee, the Trinamul leader of Opposition, stayed away from a meeting to select an additional commissioner for the state information commission as chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and finance minister Asim Dasgupta were present. On Mamata’s instructions, Trinamul leaders don’t participate in any programme organised by the Left.

Asked why he stayed away, Chatterjee said: “I am not a servant of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government. Second, I wasn’t told in advance by the government which are the probable names being thought of for the post. So, it would have been useless to attend the meeting and sign on a dotted line.”

Arambagh arrests

Eighteen Trinamul supporters have been arrested in connection with yesterday’s incidents of violence in Arambagh.

In Khanakul, Hooghly, police today seized 100 crude bombs stored in a building under construction. No one has been arrested.