I want opposition to remain divided: Buddhadeb

KOLKATA - West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has said he would always like to see the opposition parties in the state divided.

“We have to understand the issue. It’s natural that we will always want an overall unity among the Left parties. And I will always want that there should be differences among our opposition parties. It’s quite natural,” Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said in an interview to a private Bengali news channel Friday night.

The opposition — the Trinamool Congress and the Congress combine — had decimated the states ruling Left Front in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections by winning more than two thirds parliamentary seats of the state.

The Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has been ruling in the state uninterruptedly for the past 34 years.

“Whether there is an alliance between the opposition or not is not the yardstick. The real yardstick is where do the Left parties stand. Where do we stand is the real issue, everything depends on that. Then comes the question of what is the condition of the opposition,” said Bhattacharjee.