Mamata backs LF decision on Dunlop takeover

The government must also ensure that the factory’s position did not get worse after being taken over, as was the case with other government-owned industries in the state, she added.

The decision to take over the beleaguered plant was arrived at after a high-level meeting of the LF convened by Chief Minister Jyoti Basu on Wednesday, causing a flutter inpolitical circles here.

Union leaders and state ministers who attended the meeting expressed willingness to take over and run the factory on a temporary basis until a buyer was selected.

State Finance Minister Ashim Dasgupta said the Government had begun talks with a consortium of banks for interim loans to run the factory. While on the subject, Mamata also advised the LF government to respond to other sick industries in the state “with a sense of responsibility”.

A case in point, she said, was Metal Box which has been closed for the past 10 years, its workers — 3000 of them in West Bengal — having been “thrown out on to the streets”. The government hadn’t lifted a finger to help them, she added.

Reacting to the news of ULFA leader Pradip Gogoi’s arrest in Calcutta, she said the metropolis of late had become “a den of anti-socials and a conduit point for such secessionist activities owing to administrative lapses and police inefficiency.”

She said the police refused to react even when“people tried to help out”. “I had on several occasions given the police information on sensitive law and order issues but they did not respond,” Mamata said.

In another development, party sources said over 17 panchayat and district-level leaders joined the Trinamool Congress today.

Meanwhile, Congress Working Committee member K Karunakaran, who is here as part of the AICC fact-finding committee on the party’s poll debacle, said the Congress would campaign jointly with “secular” parties against the BJP.“As a communal party, BJP is and shall be untouchable for us,” he told mediapersons at the Congress office this afternoon.