Mamata scoffs at Yechury’s meeting with Geelani

KOLKATA - Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee Saturday indirectly attacked the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) for meeting hardline Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani during the all party delegation’s recent visit to Kashmir.

“When I suggested holding talks with Maoists to solve the problem then I was called a Maoist by them (CPI-M). And when they (CPI-M) went and met Geelani at his house what was that? Geelanibad,” asked Banerjee while addressing a rally in Singur.

Earlier this week, an all-party delegation led by union Home Minister P. Chidambaram went to Kashmir to take stock of the situation in the volatile Valley before deciding how to defuse tensions.

While Geelani, chief of the hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference, had earlier refused to meet the delegation but the CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury and Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s Asaduddin Owaisi, met him at his residence in the curfew-bound city.

The valley has been rocked by a cycle of violence with retaliatory firing by the security forces on stone-pelting mobs resulting in the death of over 100 civilians, mostly teenagers and youth, since June 11.