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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
CALCUTTA, JAN 20: Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee today urged the BJP to withdraw from the Maharashtra Government or `invoke Article 356.' Reacting to the activities carried on by the Shiv Sena to disrupt the forthcoming India-Pak cricket matches, the Trinamool Congress leader said: ``The Shiv Sena has violated the constitutional norms by indulging in violence on the issue of the forthcoming Pakistani cricket team's tour.'' She said: ``It's criminal to mix sports with politics.''
She also exhorted the BJP to ``pull out of the Government to teach the Shiv Sena a lesson.''
``Or,'' she hastened to add without elaborating that ``the Union Government should invoke Article 356 in the case of Maharashtra.''
However, she said that her party had all faith in Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. ``And I am confident that he would be able to do the needful,'' she added.
On Union Defence Minister George Fernandes' statement in Patna yesterday that Mamata Banerjee ``will visit Delhi after Id to discussthe Prime Minister's offer to accept a ministerial berth,'' she said: ``I never promised George that I will visit Delhi after Id as also I am very busy with the Brigade Parade Ground rally.''
She said: ``We stick to our point that the people of Bengal must be benefited and the Union Government should seriously take up our Bengal Package.''
Regretting that a controversy was created ``out of nothing,'' she said: ``When we were asked to give our preferences regarding ministries keeping in mind the effective implementation of our Bengal Package, we only gave our options.''
``We never asked for them just like that,'' she said, adding that ``we are more interested in the proper implementation of our Bengal Package.''
The Trinamool Congress chairperson today blamed the Left Front Government for deteriorating law and order situation in the state. Issuing a threat of launching a movement against the `total collapse of the law and order situation' and ``political murders'' in the districts, she said she ``hasproof about a foreign agency team coming to the city to murder her about four months back.''
She said that several big criminal gangs and foreign agencies have taken over the border districts in the state and ``the state police is not even equipped to take on the challenge.''
On the issue of infiltration, Mamata said: ``The Centre, State and Bangladesh Governments should sit together and settle the issue of Bangladeshis who have crossed over after 1971.''
She said as the Bangladeshi Premier Sheikh Hasina Wajed is scheduled to arrive in the last week of this month, the issue could be taken up with her. Mamata, who claimed that she is likely to meet Hasina during her visit, however dismissed queries if she will take up the issue with Hasina, saying that ``I do not hold any official position and I cannot take up the issue with her.''
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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