The Trinamul Congress in an editorial in Jago Bangla on Monday mounted a scathing offensive on the CPM over its decision to suspend academic Ajanta Biswas, daughter of deceased Left Front chairman Anil Biswas, for penning a series of articles for the ruling party’s Bengali mouthpiece.

In the editorial, Trinamul lavished praise on the deceased Left leader — anathema to Mamata Banerjee while he was alive — and lambasted Alimuddin Street for being unable to recover from its allegedly insular mindset.

The CPM’s Calcutta district committee had suspended the 41-year-old Ajanta from the party for six months.

“You cannot win hearts through punishment. The new generation does not want the CPM. The party is being taken from shunyo (zero) in the direction of mohashunyo (outer space) by its failed leaders,” read the editorial in Jago Bangla in firm support of Ajanta.

“… a strange party, the CPM. It sank itself. It sank its allies. No lessons learnt, despite going down to zero (seats in the Bengal Assembly),” added the editorial in the mouthpiece.

The series of articles authored by Ajanta was titled “woman power in Bengal politics”.

It chronicled the contributions of the likes of Basanti Devi and Sarojini Naidu. In the series finale, Ajanta praised Mamata, who came to power in 2011 ending the Left Front’s 34-year hegemony.

The editorial underscored the fact that the series was based on history, not politics, and mentioned many Left leaders as well and that in the present, keeping the Bengal chief minister out of the ambit of such a topic was impossible.

Trinamul asked that if Jago Bangla could accept the author’s freedom and, without omitting even one word, could publish the names of Leftist leaders in the series, why the CPM was unable to recover from its “narrow” mindset of a “well-dwelling frog”. Jago Bangla also demanded answers on why the CPM did not take Ajanta’s articles for Ganashakti, its Bengali mouthpiece.

When the CPM had showcaused Ajanta, she had replied that she had only tried to uphold the contributions made by women in politics without judging any political colour. Clearly, her answer didn’t go down well with the leadership.

“Hence, frantic fury from a section in the CPM. Ajanta must be punished. Which Ajanta? Anil Biswas’s daughter,” read the editorial. The CPM politburo member, deemed instrumental in replacing Jyoti Basu with Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as Bengal chief minister in 2000, passed away from cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 62 in the run-up to the 2006 Assembly election.

“Without whom (Anil Biswas), Ganashakti would not have run. Without whom, the party would not have returned to power in 2001. Without whose convincing, nobody would have been able to get Jyoti Basu to retire. Without whom, Subhas Chakraborty would’ve quit the party. Riding the sympathy-wave of whose untimely demise the CPM won again in 2006,” it added.

The editorial asserted that the disagreement within the CPM, over this, was clear.

“Despite that, some unknown, irrelevant leaders, who dragged the party down to zero seats in the Lok Sabha (from Bengal) and in the Assembly – having taken a suicidal decision regarding Ajanta, in the name of discipline – want their names in the media for a day,” it read.

“… they have to catch the feet of the Congress and a controversial force (the ISF) to contest elections, their discipline!” it added, touching what would be a raw nerve in the CPM.

The editorial kept rubbing salt into the smarting Sanjyukta Morcha wound of the CPM.

“None of those who worked as the BJP’s B-team to split (anti-BJP) votes, got rejected by the people by taking the “BJmul (implying that the BJP and Trinamul are two sides of the same coin)” line, got condemned within the party by upholding the Bhaijan-Salimbhai (ISF leader Peerzada Abbas Siddiqui and CPM politburo member Mohammed Salim) partnership, were punished or removed. Ajanta was punished,” read the editorial.

“It was proven that there is no personal liberty in the CPM,” it added, going on to list a slew of past examples of the Marxists distancing themselves from leaders in Bengal, which were proven later to be mistakes. It cited the instances of Somnath Chatterjee, Nripen Chakraborty, Saifuddin Chowdhury, Samir Putatunda, and even Sujit Bose, stating that now Ajanta’s name was added to the list.

Asserting that Ajanta would not suffer in the least because of the CPM’s decision, the Jago Bangla editorial claimed that there were strong, latent currents within the Marxist party.

“Instead of making the party more liberal, in keeping with the times, games of factional equations underway,” it read, attacking the CPM over the duality of some of its leaders allegedly reaching out to Mamata and accepting benefits, yet coming down heavily on Ajanta over the series.

“Eventually, when the time comes, the CPM will get a fitting response to Ajanta Biswas’s punishment,” it added.