Kolkata:
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has taken umbrage at "the language" used by Home Minister P Chidambaram after his visit to Naxal-affected Lalgarh in the state.
Chidambaram, who reviewed anti-Maoist operations, was critical of the Bengal government's handling of the Naxal situation on Sunday: "The buck must stop on the chief minister's table. If it does not, it's the failure of the state administration."
The Home Minister's reprimand did not go down well. "I have never heard a politician use the kind of language Chidambaram did. It was not good language", Bhattacharya said on Monday.
A stung Bhattacharya said he knew his responsibilities. "Let Chidambaram do his job, I know what I have to do," he said. The Chief Minister added that he had only asked the Home Minister to help ensure that the opposition cooperated with the state government on the Naxal issue.
The Home Minister's plainspeak has rattled all of the Left. CPI leader D Raja had reacted immediately saying: "He (Chidambaram) must be more responsible, more realistic rather than being rhetoric and rather than being political. When it comes to Bengal he becomes political; when it comes to Union government then?"
But Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee has said Chidambaram should have been harsher in his comments on the West Bengal government's tackling of Naxalism.