Severely chided and publicly censored by party satraps for his barb to Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, CPI(M) leader and former MP Anil Basu issued a hand-written statement to apologise for his comments on Ms Banerjee on Sunday.
Earlier dubbing Mr Basu’s out-of-turn attack as “ugliest and unfortunate”, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in a meet-the-press programme said: “We have publicly censured him, we have warned him not to use such language. We have told him to publicly apologise. If necessary further punishment may be imposed on him.” In turn, Mr Basu stated: “At a public meeting in Hooghly, the comments I carelessly made about the Opposition leader, I should not have done so at all. This is completely against the policies and culture of our party. In this connection, I realise that there has been a negative reaction among the people. I am begging forgiveness for the language I used.”
Meanwhile, the Election Commission (EC) may lodge a FIR against Mr Basu for violating the model code of conduct for his offensive and obscene comments about the Trinamul Congress chief. “If the Commission finds concrete evidences that Mr Basu has made those comments, an FIR will be lodged,” a senior EC official said. The state chief electoral officer has sent the report of the Hooghly district magistrate on this issue to the Commission at New Delhi. “We received two complaints from the Trinamul Congress leaders along with CDs, containing the video footage of the meeting. The DM Hooghly has also sent a detailed report along with the video footage of the meeting as well as the transcription. We have sent all these to the EC,” state chief electoral officer Sunil Gupta said.