Malayalam news channel Asianet has come under Right-wing attacks for ignoring the Bengal post poll violence. The phone call was one of the many similar calls made to media offices in other states. The BJP and Sangh parivar have launched a nationwide campaign to malign and harass Mamata Banerjee. This strategy has acquired momentum after the news of Mamata being projected as the challenger to Modi started making the rounds at the national level.
The RSS and BJP are not only indulging in maligning game at the national level, they have been using all available forums, CBI, the Union home ministry and Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar to accomplish its mission. They have been resorting to the aggressive posture to present themselves as the victim. Losing the Bengal assembly election has eclipsed the charisma and image of Narendra Modi and the authority of Amit Shah which he has wielding as the home minister. The Sangh parivar has managed to create an impression that he was the main strategist, the Chanakya of the BJP, and does the ground work for Modi.
RSS ideologues nurse the view that standing on a weak podium Modi and Shah cannot aspire to win the elections of the UP assembly or any other state. They also cannot aspire to go to Lok Sabha election in 2024 with a shaken confidence. They have to muster courage to challenge the popularity of Mamata and imperil her image. Unless her leadership is challenged in a resolute manner the party could not retain the seats it had won in 2019. In fact a senior BJP leader confessed; “We won 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state (in 2019) and we need to defend our turf and ensure we win these seats again in 2024”.
It is for the first time during seven year rule of Narendra Modi that a face has surfaced as the viable alternate. In 2019 the Congress had tried to project Rahul Gandhi but he failed to catch peoples’ imagination. But the case of Mamata Banerjee is different. She has emerged as the natural choice of the people. In this backdrop given Mamata’s image and her emphatic victory it would be very difficult for the BJP to repeat the Lok Sabha performance not only in Bengal but also in other states. Insiders maintain that the BJP leadership is scared of the fact that the Bengal verdict would cast an impact on the Uttar Pradesh polls in 2022. Already some news channels have started showing the results of the public opinion giving an edge to Samajwadi Party. In fact this trepidation got strengthened by the worst drubbing the BJP got in the UP panchayat election held merely a month back.
The first major action that the BJP resorted against Mamata was to arrest the TMC ministers and senior leaders on the charges of corruption and their being involved in Narada scam. Before taking to this recourse Amit Shah had desperately tried to create the impression that Bengal was the worst crime prone state, worse than Uttar Pradesh and to validate his manoeuvres he even sent three teams of central officers. But his scheming did not work. Obviously he had to fall back upon his plan B; arrest of the senior TMC leaders. This was the best device for Shah to smear the image of Mamata and discredit her in the eyes of the people of the country. He also took to this action to send the message that he has not given up on “Mission Bengal”.
The arrest of Mamata’s ministers by the CBI is the worst kind of vendetta politics. Charge sheets against the four persons was filed long back, and once the charge sheet is filed legally arrest for more interrogation does not stand scrutiny. But the CBI insisted on arresting them for further probe and investigation. Incidentally Dhankar was quite obliging in giving sanction to the CBI to arrest them. The arrests followed an aggressive attack by Dhankhar, who has consistently been busy preparing the ground for imposition of President’s rule in the state. In fact he was one step ahead of Shah in describing Bengal as lost case. Just after arrest he quipped; “there is complete breakdown of constitutional machinery in the state. Total lawlessness & anarchy. Police and administration in silence mode. Hope you realise repercussions of such lawlessness and failure of constitutional mechanism”.
The mindset of Dhankar could be made out from the tweeter which read; “Cannot overlook such drifting from constitution @MamataOfficial. How can ruling party harmads (mercenaries) be law into themselves…”. Shockingly he uses the word “harmads” for the TMC cadres who were protesting the arrest. The High Court which stayed the bail granted by the CJM, unfortunately did not take cognisance of this derogatory term. Nonetheless this single word unravels the truth that a well designed conspiracy was hatched by the CBI, Dhankar and Shah to malign Mamata.
While hearing the CBI’s argument on Monday, the judge of the subordinate court had questioned the need to take the accused — ministers Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim, MLA Madan Mitra and former mayor Sovan Chatterjee who had recently distanced himself from the BJP — into custody when chargesheets against them had been filed.
CBI has been insisting that the case be transferred to some other High Court. They have been trying to portray the protest by the TMC cadres and Mamata against the arrest as an act of defiance of constitutional and legal provisions. This is the part of the design. All this has been a brazen move by the ruling party, not to accept the poll verdict, to make out a case for imposing central rule in the state. But it also reflects the utter desperation of Shah. He ought to realise that this would prove to be counterproductive.
It is interesting to note that the CBI has not been talking of the merit of the case. It has been harping on; “Why were the state law minister and four of his cabinet colleagues present in the trial court during the hearing of the ail petitions? Why did the chief minister and her party’s leaders not dissuade their supporters from agitating outside the CBI office?”Strange enough the CBI did not make the arrests in these four years since the case was handed over to the agency.
Though the CBI alleged that the situation prevailing in Bengal was “unprecedented” and of extraordinary circumstances it conveniently forgot its motto of “Industry, Impartiality and Integrity” and the uncomplimentary epithet awarded to it by the Supreme Court in 2013 of “caged parrot”. Once again on May 17 the CBI preferred to live up to its reputation.
A general secretary of the BJP confessed that the arrest of the ministers was excessive but defended saying they “If we don’t do anything then even a chunk of our MLAs would also defect”. Strange enough for protecting the interest of the party the BJP leadership is ready to stoop so low and subvert the constitutional provisions. Do Modi and Shah think that people of India, specifically the Bengali people, would not react?
It is said that the RSS has been exerting immense pressure on the Modi government to act against Mamata. It is an open secret that defeat of BJP has shattered the design of the RSS to use Bengal as the fulcrum to spread in the entire east and north east India. They are worried at their failure to communalise the Hindus of the state. The fact remains that the defeat in Bengal has stung the current regime at the Centre and they are unable to accept it. (IPA Service)
