Malda, Dec. 8: Fisheries minister Kiranmoy Nanda today likened Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to the whimsical Mohammad bin Tughlaq and accused his government of giving smaller partners the short shrift on matters of importance.

Nanda suggested that the government’s recent decisions such as sending forces to Lalgarh were whimsical. “Joint forces were deployed in Lalgarh and we are yet to get any results. The politics of annihilation hasn’t come to an end. How long can this go on? The government has lost all control over the situation. It seems it is run by Mohammad bin Tughlaq.”

“The ministers are running around in the districts, holding meetings. Before the 1977 elections, the Congress and its chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray had done the same, but they couldn’t hold on to power,” he added.

Tughlaq, the 14th Century sultan, is legendary for hasty decisions that cost him dear.

The outburst comes after a recent snub from the chief minister for opposing a four-year-old government decision to offer an educational trust 15 acres on Calcutta’s eastern fringes, which the fisheries minister claims to be a water body.

The minister, holding the fisheries portfolio since 1982, had demanded that the chief minister step down and call for early polls after the Left’s November 10 bypoll drubbing.

Here to open a Socialist Party office, Nanda said: “There is a cabinet, there are cabinet ministers and a chief minister, but each one is doing what he pleases.”

To illustrate how “ignored” he felt, Nanda said: “There is a large population of fisher folks in the Sunderbans. Still, I was totally ignored in the reconstruction work after cyclone Aila. Why? Is it because I am from a small party?”