Brinda Karat leads the CPM campaign rally at Sukna, about 15 km from Siliguri, on Friday. A Telegraph picture

Siliguri, April 28: CPM politburo member Brinda Karat suggested that self-help groups be set up to train men in handling domestic chores.

Karat, of course, said that in jest, but judging by the response to her banter at an election rally at Baghajatin Park here today, it looked like the women of Siliguri wouldn?t actually mind giving the suggestion a go for real.

The Rajya Sabha member regaled the 500 and odd women with her sense of humour at the meeting organised by the Darjeeling district committee of the West Bengal Ganatantrik Mahila Samiti. And she more than made up for her lack of fluency in Bengali.

A Bengali by birth but born and brought up in Delhi, Karat supplemented her Bengali speech with a heavy dose of Hindi. At one point, she had to seek help from party colleague Jibitesh Sarkar, as she searched for the Bengali word for leopard. ?Cheetah bagh,? offered Sarkar.

A little later Karat was like a leopard herself as she tore into the functioning of the election commission in imposing a ban on defacement of walls, and depriving genuine voters from exercising their franchise. ?The matters of birth and death are decided by god, but here it is the election commission who decides,? she said, clearly playing to the gallery.

She spoke about the achievements of the Left Front, and took pot shots at the UPA government but did not have much to offer on north Bengal. She did mention though that Siliguri was developing rapidly under the guidance of urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya, the party?s candidate for the Siliguri Assembly seat.

Karat concluded with a cricketing analogy. ?So far you have been hitting boundaries, but this time you must hit sixes like Dhoni to help the CPM win by an even bigger margin,? she said. Not many in the women-dominated audience, though, seemed to appreciate the humour.