The Trinamool Congress on Friday suspended party leader and physician Shantanu Sen, whose critical comments to the media at the peak of the RG Kar movement had caused the supreme leadership considerable discomfort, and Arabul Islam, its Bhangar bully and a chronic embarrassment for his south Calcutta seniors.
Contacted by this newspaper for their response, former MLA Islam declined to comment while former Rajya Sabha member Sen made no bones about his bitterness.
The decision to suspend both, attributed to “anti-party activities” and announced by the party’s state vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar in the evening. It hardly surprised anyone in the ruling dispensation, as action against both was being mulled for a while.
The letters of suspension were signed by Trinamool state president Subrata Bakshi.
Sen faced action four times last year by the ruling dispensation — he dropped as a party spokesperson, an adviser to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s health department, from the list of government-appointed representatives in patients’ welfare committees of hospitals and from the state medical council. This followed his dissonant comments following the RG Kar tragedy, viewed as a direct challenge to chief minister Mamata Banerjee, also the state health minister.
“Every waking minute, outside the time I devote to my profession, I have dedicated to the party. Even today, in my interactions with journalists and others, I was busy defending the party. What exactly in my activities or conduct could possibly be deemed anti-party, I would like to be told with ample clarity,” he said.
“I have never been raided by the CBI or the ED, my phone was never confiscated by any probe agency, I was never named or accused in case of corruption, I am not linked to murder or theft or anything illegal or unethical…. Which of those could be construed as anti-party here is incomprehensible to me,” added the 52-year-old physician, tongue firmly in cheek.
Sen, a Rajya Sabha member between April 2018 and April 2024, rued having to find out from the media first that he was suspended, having been with Trinamool since his time as a student at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. His wife, Calcutta’s Ward 2 councillor Kakali Sen, was also a student of RG Kar; as is their daughter Soumili Sen now.
Asked if his August 2024 comments in the immediate aftermath of the rape-and-murder at RG Kar could have caused his suspension, Sen claimed that was unlikely, as he had been critical of how the institution was being run under now-removed principal Sandip Ghosh even before the August 9 brutality, although not in public.
“I said whatever I said about Ghosh and RG Kar under him many times in the past, and had confidentially conveyed my concerns to relevant quarters long before the tragedy. My frantic red-flagging then had gone largely unheeded,” said Sen, firmly pledging his allegiance to Trinamool.
“That was specific to RG Kar. I have never budged an inch from defending the fact that there has been a revolution in the state’s health sector in 14 years under Mamata Banerjee,” he added.
Sen said some people might have engineered the perception that he actively encouraged the RG Kar movement, which wasn’t true.
“No one person could have done anything substantial to encourage that spontaneous movement of the people. During the movement, I never said one word against the party or its leadership,” he said.
Asked if his closeness to Abhishek Banerjee was becoming a problem, Sen said: “Is Abhishek Banerjee outside the party?”
“Mamata Banerjee is the supreme leader, the chairperson of the party. (Her nephew) Abhishek is the national general secretary, the shenapoti (general/marshal). Where is the conflict?” he asked.
Barely 28km away, in Bhangar, celebrations were seen from Trinamool supporters owing allegiance to another Bhangar strongman, Canning Purba MLA Saokat Molla, over the punishment meted out to Islam.
Some of them had seen the January 1 dogfight in the struggle for Bhangar's dominance between the Islam and Molla factions, which had not gone down well with 30B Harish Chatterjee Street.
Bhangar’s former MLA and current panchayat samiti chief Islam was allegedly manhandled, and his car was vandalised by a party faction while he was returning after "gatecrashing" a foundation day event in Polerhat hosted by Molla's supporters. The subsequent factional clash prompted police to resort to a lathi-charge.
Molla had accused Islam of inciting tension. The MLA had alleged that Islam kept trying to hoist the party flag at various foundation day events of the party, even when it had been hoisted by the local leadership.
Islam, arrested in February last year for his alleged role in the murder of an ISF panchayat poll candidate, was recently released on bail.
“This is Arabul Islam’s second suspension in a decade,” pointed out a party senior, recalling the six-year suspension given to him in October 2014, over alleged links with the murder of a member of a rival Trinamool faction. That suspension was revoked in January 2016.