Sunday, January 8 2006 19:03 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: Launching its campaign for the coming Assembly elections in West Bengal, the Communist Party of India (CPI) Marxist (M) today (Jan 8,2006)called upon supporters to act as 'soldiers' in strengthening booth level coordination during the hustings and ensure that the party polled at least 50 per cent of votes in its strongholds.

''We have four slogans for the elections to unite the working class and middle class, to bring them to our fold, to increase our votes in our strongholds from 48 per cent of the total votes polled in the last elections to 50 per cent this time. Our supporters must act as soldiers in strengthening booth level coordination,'' CPI(M) state secretary Anil Biswas said at a CPI(M) rally here.

He said that if the party could work on these lines, then it will be able to break its record of the 1987 elections when the then main opposition Congress got only 40 of the 294 seats in the Assembly.

''This time, we must ensure that the opposition got lesser number of seats,'' he said.

Accusing the opposition Trinamool Congress and Congress of not supporting the developmental work of the Left Front Government, Biswas said that before the elections, the Congress was inciting the Kamtapuri separatists and the Greater Coochbehar People's Association. During the last Assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress had allied with the Jharkhand Party.

''We do not consider Trinamool Congress as a political party. It has no constitution or organisational structure. It is only a platform to fulfil the wishes of a leader. Whatever she says is gospel truth for the party,'' Biswas said without naming Mamata Banerjee.

''The madness of the party is such, that the 70-year-old chairman of the delimitation commission had said that he had not seen such barbarism in his lifetime,'' he said.