Day after blaming CPI(M) for Tata exit from Singur, Banerjee slams BJP for rising unemployment

New Delhi: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday once again trained her guns at the BJP-ruled Centre and said that there has been a 40% decrease in employment opportunities and the number of places to work have also dipped despite the Bharatiya Janata Party’s tall promises of creating more jobs.

“In India, there’s a 40% decrease in employment and work organizations have also reduced in number; whereas in Bengal there has been a 40% increase in work organizations and poverty has also reduced,” the West Bengal CM said at an event in Kolkata.

Barely a day after she blamed the CPI(M) for driving away the Tata Group from investing in Singur of Hooghly district in the last decade, Banerjee said, “We don’t discriminate between people, whoever comes here to invest in industry is welcome. CPI(M) snatched farmers’ lands, killed people and burned them alive. We said at that time that no one’s land should be forcefully grabbed and today our protest is accepted as a law in country.”

Banerjee had on Wednesday claimed that it was not her but the CPI(M) which drove away Tata Motors from Singur. “There are people who are spreading canards that I have driven away the Tatas from West Bengal. I did not force them away, but it was the CPI(M) which drove them away,” she said at a government event.

Often attacking the ruling BJP at the Centre for declining job opportunities and a rate of unemployment which is at an all-time high of 45 years, Banerjee is held responsible in her home state for a dharna on the national highway outside the factory that forced the Tata Group to shift the project from West Bengal—an investment that could have created thousands of jobs in the state.

Pulling the project out of West Bengal in October 2008, Ratan Tata, the head of the Tata empire, blamed the Trinamool Congress agitation led by Banerjee for the group’s decision.

The Bengal chief minister further said her government would continue providing jobs to the people though there were forces who created hindrances. “I want massive employment opportunities to be generated here. There are forces that do not want people to get jobs. They are causing hindrances for them,” she said in a veiled reference to the ongoing agitation for school jobs in Kolkata.

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