Monday, 25 November 2024
Monday, 25 November 2024
The results of the bypolls to the six Assembly constituencies declared on Saturday – which the Trinamul made a clean sweep of, winning all six – were a foregone conclusion even before the first voter pressed the button on the electronic voting machines on November 13.
And yet, Mamata Banerjee’s party for over a week has been speaking in so many different voices that it is difficult to decipher who’s in charge.
On Monday, the Trinamul top brass is assembling at Kalighat for a meeting where a reportedly contentious proposal submitted by the Trinamul’s general secretary and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee on a complete overhaul of the organisation, which has apparently rankled Mamata, is likely to come up.
“The reshuffle he has proposed ranges from those at the district, municipality, block and panchayat levels and the numbers are huge. Didi is not convinced that such sweeping changes with barely 18-months left for the state Assembly polls is a good idea,” said a Trinamul leader.
The major fear is a mass exodus with a predatory BJP waiting to widen its base and acceptability in a state where it is on a declining slide despite being the only opposition party in the Assembly.
Both the parties have a history of exchanging members in Bengal.
The latest flashpoint to the current conflict(s) was a failed assassination attempt on a Trinamul councillor, Sushanta Ghosh, on a main thoroughfare in Calcutta on the evening of Friday, November 15, which was caught on camera.
Mayor Firhad Hakim, one of the strongest loyalists of Mamata Banerjee, was the first to raise questions on the role of the police, a department headed by the chief minister herself in all her three terms.
“Enough is enough. I want to tell the police, act now. Where is the intelligence? Where is the network?” Hakim asked. “It is not Firhad Hakim’s job or Sushanta Ghosh’s job to stop criminals. That is the job of the police.”
Soon enough, another Mamata loyalist and Trinamul old guard, Dum Dum MP Saugata Roy, joined the chorus.
“How can a 9mm pistol from Bihar reach Calcutta? The police are incapable of arresting anyone,” Roy told party workers.
“The police receive their salaries from taxes paid by the people. Is there no one to check our borders, the police cannot catch anyone? We have to think about this. Guns are being fired for flats and land in Calcutta. The councillor had almost died. The question is can we stop this culture or not.”
The question many were left asking was why Hakim and Roy, who have the unrelenting support of the chief minister, were speaking against the cops.
This anti-police chorus from the Trinamul old guard had fed the opposition parties, with many leaders asking if the questions being raised were aimed at Mamata.
The answer came from Mamata herself during a meeting streamed live on Thursday evening from the state secretariat, where the chief minister accused a section of the police of working in collusion with coal, sand and cow smugglers as well as illegal mining mafia.
It made it clear that the old guard was only preparing the ground for the chief minister to air her grievances against a section of the same police department that reports to her.
Is it a coincidence that the Trinamul’s general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has been named in scams related to all these sectors named by the chief minister televised live all across the state?
“You have to take care of some things,” Mamata told the acting director-general of police Rajeev Kumar during the meeting after he took his seat next to Bengal chief secretary Manoj Pant, following summons from the chief minister.
“Maybe you are trying, but lower level officers, officials, who do not love this government, some of your officers accept bribes and the blame falls on the Trinamul.”
The chief minister instructed the acting DGP to take action against anyone committing wrong irrespective of the party colours.
Picture 4
Mamata also announced a complete reshuffle of the state Criminal Investigation Department. The ADG CID, R. Rajasekaran is perceived to be close to Camac Street, the other power centre in Bengal from where the Trinamul’s general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, operates with a separate set of staff, unrelated to the party.
“Didi believes that the police are listening more to what is being said from Camac Street than the state secretariat; therefore, the instructions to the acting DGP,” said a Trinamul insider.
The first axe to fall was on the officer-in-charge of a police station in the coal district of Asansol, Barabani, on Thursday. Days before that additional commissioner in the Kolkata Police, Murli Dhar, under whose watch the rape and murder of the young doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital and the murder attempt on the Trinamul councillor took place, was sent packing to the state police academy.
On Friday, two lower rank Trinamul leaders were arrested from neighbouring Durgapur for their alleged role in smuggling of scrap iron.
Following Mamata’s statement one can connect the dots with the outburst from the Trinamul’s senior camp.
According to a Trinamul leader, there is a free-for-all going on in the party.
“Some are trying to stay in Didi’s good books, others in Abhishek’s. Everyone, right now, is pushing for their own agenda within the party,” the Trinamul leader said.
“He was barely two years old when CPM goons hit me on the head,” Mamata had said, introducing Abhishek in 2014 in Diamond Harbour, his constituency for three terms now.
“O amake bolechhilo, ‘pisi, boro hoye ami badla nebo’ [He had told me, aunty, I will avenge this when I grow up],” Mamata told the assembled crowd referring to the alleged assault on her in 1990.
Much has happened since then. Within months of coming to power, Mamata floated a separate platform for the youth, called Trinamul Yuva, under Abhishek’s leadership, an entity separate from the Trinamul Youth Congress, which was then headed by the present Leader of Opposition in the Assembly and the second person to defeat Mamata in an election, the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari.
Few months later, she merged Yuva with the party’s youth wing and had Adhikari replaced by Abhishek. The following year, Abhishek was made observer for the two districts of East and West Midnapore, where the Adhikaris held sway, sparking a feud.
The feud remained till Adhikari quit the Trinamul in late 2020 and then defeated Mamata in the 2021 Assembly polls from Nandigram, the same place from where the Trinamul had ensured 13 years ago the fall of the Left Front government.
Since then, insiders insist, Abhishek’s political ambition has soared sky high.
A Calcutta-based political analyst who has been close to Kalighat for close to four decades said: “Mamata di brought Abhishek into politics. Now she is unsure of what to do with him.”
In her long political career and three-terms as chief minister, Mamata Banerjee has shown no inclination for inducting a deputy. Moreover, apart from the home department, she also holds the portfolios for health and family welfare, personnel and administration, land and land reforms and refugee and rehabilitation, and information and cultural affairs and north Bengal development.
Abhishek’s elevation as Trinamul general secretary soon after the 2021 Assembly election had fuelled speculation that he was the anointed heir. Mamata is yet to name him officially as her successor.
According to a section of the Trinamul, Abhishek is quite aware of this and therefore at some of the times appears too eager to put his step forward towards the next big step, announcing programmes like the Diamond Harbour model – which was launched during the Covid pandemic and later expanded to include community kitchens and monthly pension schemes – running parallel to those offered by the government.
The Diamond Harbour model was pitched as something unique that none of the other 41 MPs from the state including his own party colleagues could emulate.
The clamour to see Abhishek in a bigger role was started by none other than his most trusted lieutenant, who has been in and out of favour more than any other Trinamul leader, Kunal Ghosh.
Recently reinstated as a state general secretary, Ghosh appears to have struck a fine balance between Mamata and her nephew.
A day before Abhishek’s 37th birthday earlier this month, which turned out to be a grand public event outside his residence at Harish Mukherjee Street, Ghosh wrote on his X handle: “A few hours later will be Abhishek’s birthday. May he stay well, healthy and his eye problem get cured completely. He has left a mark of his leadership at a very young age and in the coming years it can only expand. Whether I remain active in politics or not, I will keep an eye on this upcoming star. Though he is younger than me, as long as I am active in the Trinamul, he will remain my leader. I love him and adore him. I have seen Mamata di for many years and now I am observing Abhishek. In a short time he has matured. He is combining emotion with technology and strategy. He is getting sharper. By the laws of time after Mamata di he will become the chief minister of Bengal one day, from the general he will become the leader. He will bear the legacy of Mamata di, as per the need of today’s time. While Mamata di’s leadership continues, the footsteps of the next-in-line should echo in the socio-political landscape of Bengal.”
Another Trinamul MLA from Murshidabad, who has jumped ship to the BJP and back in the last five years, went a few steps ahead and demanded Abhishek be appointed as deputy chief minister with the home portfolio.
Picture 8 Abhishek Mamata split
While this push for Abhishek was rising within the party, some others were busy getting Mamata to settle their scores. Like the Trinamul MP Kalyan Bandyopadhyay and MLA Madan Mitra, who have been calling each other names. Mamata, to whom both swear their allegiance, has asked both to cool down.
In these 10 days or so, not a single word has come from any of the ministers in the Bengal government who are known to be close to the party general secretary, nor the MPs whom he had handpicked.
According to the grapevine, when a senior Trinamul leader called up a member of Abhishek’s staff at Camac Street, he was told, “Keep watching the fun.”
Political analyst Subhamay Maitra does not agree to any rift between Mamata and Abhishek, nor does he expect any major churn in Bengal’s ruling party.
“As long as the Trinamul keeps winning elections there is no reason for Mamata Banerjee to worry about anything. Most of the Trinamul nominees win because of the support of brand Mamata,” said Maitra.
The structure of parties like the Trinamul is such that conflict of some sort or the other will always be there. That does not mean Abhishek will hold a palace coup or the chief minister will throw him away.”
During the meeting at the state secretariat on Thursday, Mamata had said, “...if I live for another ten years…”
The inferences from that could be many. One could be that Abhishek would have to wait longer, irrespective of the outcome of Monday’s meeting.
