Rebuilding rural Bengal my immediate priority: Mamata

Sasan: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday said rebuilding rural areas in the state is her immediate priority. "Rebuilding rural Bengal is my immediate priority after accomplishing my task of driving out CPI(M) from power," Banerjee said at a panchayat poll rally in Sasan.

The Trinamool Congress supremo was speaking at Sasan block in North 24-pargana district, which was once a CPI(M) stronghold during the previous Left Front regime and goes for the third phase of rural polls on July 19.

Lashing out at the CPI(M) for, what she alleged, consistently ignoring rural Bengal in last 34 years, the Chief Minister said, "the Marxists exploited villages for political purposes, but did absolutely nothing to develop rural areas and benefit the poor village folk."

Listing her government's plans to develop rural belts, the Chief Minister said, "it is my foremost task to chart out development programmes for villages which are the backbone of West Bengal."

"I achieved my goal of driving out CPI(M) from power. Now I have fixed priority to develop rural Bengal, and it is my immediate task," Banerjee said.

Admitting that rebuilding rural Bengal is a difficult task, the chief minister said, "new panchayats will usher in a development and I will not stop in this effort". The Trinamool Congress chief asked her party workers to go to interior villages and listen to poor people's needs and grievances.

"Work seriously and hand in hand with the target of serving mother Bengal as villages are backbone of our state," she said.

The Chief Minister trained her guns once again on the Centre for not paying any heed to the state government's urge for a moratorium on interest payments on the huge loans taken by previous left Front government.

"Centre takes away huge sums of money from us on interest for loans. I could have created jobs for one lakh people had the state not to pay the interest," she said adding that her government has been struggling hard to keep the wheels of economy running under severe constraints.