I am going back, Delhi is not safe: Mamata

IANS/New DelhiDelhi was unsafe and she was returning to Kolkata as she was unwell, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said yesterday, a day after she faced protests from leftist student activists.“I am going back. I was on oxygen the whole night. Doctors suggested hospitalisation but I don’t want to go to hospital,” she told reporters.“I will come again... Delhi is not safe,” she said.Banerjee said she had cancelled her a meeting with Finance Minister P Chidambaram and had apologised to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as she could not meet him on Tuesday.Banerjee and her Finance Minister Amit Mitra were heckled by activists of the students Federation of India on Tuesday as she went to the Planning Commission for a meeting.Angry Trinamool Congress workers protested across West Bengal against the incident.“My cadres are totally peaceful. They are very emotional but listen to me,” Banerjee said.The chief minister hinted that someone was behind Tuesday’s incident and said police had not allowed her to go inside the Planning Commission building.“Of course,” said Banerjee when asked if she thought someone was behind the incident.“The gate was locked. I told the police we had come for a Planning Commission meeting. Police officials said I could not go as they had no keys,” she said.“There could have been a bloodbath ... but it is peaceful,” she said, terming the communist parties, which condemned Tuesday’s incident, as hypocrites.However, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Sitaram Yechury said Banerjee’s delegation chose to enter into a confrontation with the SFI activists.Yechury said the security personnel had told the West Bengal delegation to enter the Planning Commission through another gate, but they chose to use the entrance where the SFI activists had gathered to peacefully protest against the killing of student leader Sudipto Gupta in Kolkata in under police custody on April 2.Yechury condemned the incident, and said the party was looking into how it happened.“The information we have is that the delegation from West Bengal was told by security persons to enter the building through a particular gate, as demonstrators were not there,” said Yechury.Meanwhile, West Bengal Governor M K Narayanan asked the CPM politburo for a public apology. “The shocking premeditated assault on the chief minister, the finance minister and senior ministers of West Bengal in the national capital is an extremely unfortunate incident and is a blot on India’s cherished democratic values. The incident deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms,” Narayanan said in a statement.The incident was “unprecedented in India’s modern history,” he said adding those “responsible for the attack and their instigators have forfeited the right to function within a democratic framework.”“This kind of attack on a democratically elected chief minister, finance minister and their cabinet colleagues is unprecedented in India’s modern history and is serious enough to warrant a public apology by the politburo of the CPM,” he said.The governor also urged the Trinamool and other parties of the state to maintain peace.