By Anjan Roy
KOLKATA: Mamata Banerjee’s chief minister tenure is ending in infamy. It should not have inevitably ended that way.
Even after her stunning loss, she is refusing to resign and now demanding what was an anathema for her all along— President’s Rule for Bengal. Her cringing to the chair is being widely caricatured in social media and in popular gossips.
She is refusing to accept electoral defeat, and claiming moral victory for not resigning. She is planning to start a legal career, among other things and making herself a laughing stock.
An ignominious stage for a holder of the post of “chief minister of West Bengal,” which was once adorned by Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, who used to call Jawaharlal Nehru as “Jahar” and cured US President John Kennedy of an aliment while meeting the latter in course of a casual visit.
Today, in the midst of such sights, one feels rather belittled as a Bengali.
The irony in the present situation is Mamata Banerjee had begun with great political capital and goodwill of the people. Today, on the eve of her departure, which she is facetiously resisting, the same people are expressing their rage against fifteen years of Trinamool misrule.
Today, the BJP is by default getting all the credit for crafting an election strategy for its unprecedented victory in Bengal. For those with the least political sense, it is plain this isn’t true.
It is only the naive and dimwits without a trace of an idea of the ground level reality in Bengal, will believe about the Election Commission winning BJP’s battles or the SIR process tilting the balance.
If anyone is the architect for Mamata Banerjee’s utter disarray and a landslide for BJP, it is Mamata Banerjee herself.
It is her own creation, Subhendu Adhikari, which had proved to be her nemesis. He had defeated her in the last assembly election, which she could not digest and claimed his win was rigged. This time as well, he had defeated Mamata in her home ground of Bhowanipore for a second time, which is doubly galling for her.
Subhendu was the face of Trinamool youth brigade and he had worked in close collaboration with Mamata. Subhendu was dislodged from his position to accommodate Abhishek Banerjee, her professedly nephew, who many call her son.
That was the beginning. That was also the end. Under the imprimatur of Mamata, Abhishek turned out to be the arbitrary of TMC which had alienated many party stalwarts and grass root workers. What is going around in TMC circles is that I-PAC, consultancy firm which had crafted TMC’s election strategy, worked as collection agent for Abhishek.
Many aggrieved TMC party workers, including failed party ticket aspirants in the run up to this round of election, complain that the TMC supremo’s protege had demanded a couple of crores for the party tickets. Those who fail to up, were denied.
True of false, narratives are emerging galore of the tyranny of the protege. No less than seventy of the nominees to the TMC list were from Abhishek’s list, including that of Jyotipriya Mullick, the hated and disputed food minister who was arrested on charges of defalcation and misuse of food under the public distribution system.
Dev, a widely popular Bengali film actor who was drafted by Mamata in the cause of her party, today has given a social media post in which he has welcomed the formation of the new BJP government in Bengal. He has expressed his high hopes about the new government bringing about development and “freedom” in the state.
That is significant. Dev was referring in his post to the culture of official patronage for distribution of film assignments to actors and actresses in Tollygunge. Mamata Banerjee had mad sure that only those film artistes got assignments who were aligned to her party and her politics. Many actors and actresses aligned to the opposition were reduced to penury.
This was never the culture in Tollywood, heart of Bengali film production. Even in Leftist days, those who were opposed to the Left were not denied jobs. This kind of stranglehold extended to every aspect of life in Mamata’s Bengal. It had turned into a state of fear, repression and retribution.
There are reports that the defeated Trinamool leader, Udayan Guha, who was prominent and extremely active, had to flee his home and constituency in the dead of night in an ambulance, to escape popular hatred in north Bengal’s Dinhata constituency.
The fear about popular rage was because he had been extremely repressive and had slapped cases on numerous local people on even flimsy grounds. Udayan Guha’s case was by no means rare. Rather that was fairly common and more cases of attacks and demand for actions against Trinamool leaders coming to the fore all across the state.
Even party insiders are now rebelling what they could not dare before. Trinamool party insiders are now giving vent to their dissatisfaction with the decisions of the party higher ups on various actions and omissions.
A section of the party has become vocal about the selection of Jyotipriya Mullick, minster for food and civil supplies, as a party candidate for the election. They pointed out that the minster was severely criticised for corruptions over food distribution for which he had to go to jail.
Umpteen number of complaints are coming out — as they say, the skeletons from the cupboards of Trinamool Congress. (IPA Service)
