Left parties gear up for their Feb 3 Brigade Parade rally

Kolkata, Jan 20 (IANS) After Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee's 'United India' rally at the Brigade Parade Ground, the Left parties are trying hard to make their February 3 rally at the same venue a success ahead of Lok Sabha elections, a state leader said on Sunday.

Taunting the rally organised by the ruling party in West Bengal as "an insult" to the historic ground, CPI (M) State Secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said the turnout in their rally to protest against the "anti-people" steps by the Narendra Modi government would be a record and that they would recover the pride of the ground.

"The Trinamool rally on Saturday was an insult to the Brigade Parade Ground. The turnout at our Brigade rally on February 3 will be bigger than that of Trinamool and upcoming BJP rally (which was scheduled to be held on February 9) together," Mishra said. 

"We will recover the pride of the Brigade on February 3," he said at a march in Hooghly district.

As many as 23 political parties, including the Congress and major regional parties such as the SP, BSP and DMK came together on Saturday at the mega rally to throw the gauntlet at Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the run-up to the coming general election.

Mishra said the CPI(M) has been striving to assemble anti-BJP parties to remove the Modi government at the Centre and in the state, and has called upon both anti-BJP and anti-Trinamool parties to come together.

The Left leaders have been organising several meetings and rallies across districts and appealing to supporters and activists to attend the meeting.

The state leadership of the party has urged party cadre and supporters to send their views and memories of earlier Left Front rallies held at the Brigade Parade Ground. 

Tagged as #PeoplesBrigade in the Facebook post, the party leaders have exhorted workers to send photos of posters, graphics and campaign programmes in their locality through WhatsApp, Facebook or Twitter.