About a half-hour into the news conference, the cat was out of the bag.
"Yes, I am a member of the RSS, the biggest organisation in the world. I shall stay so for the rest of my life," declared Subhankar Halder.
Halder was one of the three "Facebook friends" who had sounded the call for Tuesday's march to Nabanna to press for Mamata Banerjee's resignation, and who were on Monday evening addressing the media at the Kolkata Press Club.
Halder, a Nadia resident who said he was a student of Kalyani University, was accompanied by friends Sayan Lahiri and Prabir Das as well as four others.
And while they kept repeating that it was an "apolitical movement", the programme’s saffron connection kept tumbling out willy-nilly during the one-and-a-half-hour interaction.
Das said: "All here are adults and have their own political choices. However, we are here under an umbrella where students are seeking justice for another student. It's a students' movement, non-political."
But Lahiri had to face questions about media reports that he had a past association with the BJP. “I was doing TMCP during my college days. Later I joined the BJP but I have ended all relations with them,” he said.
It wasn’t just the main organisers’ personal backgrounds; several other developments surrounding Tuesday’s event too made its saffron hue apparent.
First, multiple BJP sources said the party was trying to bring people in from districts such as East Midnapore, North 24-Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly for the rally.
“Specific instructions have come from our leaders that we have to send people from our areas like Sandeshkhali and Hingalganj,” a BJP leader in North 24-Parganas said.
Second, the BJP is the only Opposition party in the state not to have distanced itself from the rally. The Left and the Congress have already said they do not support the march to the state secretariat.
“This march is a ploy to divert the demand for justice. I urge the Left supporters and workers not to fall into the trap of the BJP and the RSS,” DYFI state secretary Minakshi Mukherjee said. Congress leaders in the state echoed her.
The third and most important indicator, a source said, was the response of a section of BJP politicians to the march, believed to have been organised from behind the scenes by the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, as a show of strength.
Sources said that Adhikari had initially toyed with the idea of joining the march in his “personal capacity” but later changed his mind when the students requested political leaders not to join the event.
While Adhikari has lent support to the event from the start, others such as state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar have done so now under the central leadership’s prodding, sources said.
“Initially, he didn’t have any interest in the programme as it was known within the party that Suvenduda was behind it.... Later, he (Sukanta) changed his position and began talking about his moral support, following instructions from our central leaders,” a source said.
With the rally’s BJP association becoming a talking point in the city, a volley of questions was hurled at the student leaders when they faced the media this evening. Their answers failed to establish their claim that their movement had no political colour, agreed a BJP insider who had watched the event live.
“We have been claiming that this march is a veiled BJP event from day one since it was announced. Today it was exposed that the BJP has been confusing the people of Bengal,” Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said.
“Not only is it a BJP event, one of the organisers (Halder) has even been accused of outraging a woman’s modesty.”
Halder, responding to questions on the allegation, said: “Is there any charge of 376 of IPC (rape) against me? I will not answer any questions from TMC’s junior leaders (or anyone else) apart from Mamata Banerjee.”
• Halder, a teacher, has a master’s from Kalyani University and is doing his BEd from there. Trinamool had accused the RSS pracharak of involvement in an incident where a woman was sexually harassed.
• Lahiri, senior-most among the three, is doing an MBA from the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, Haringhata. A resident of Calcutta, he majored in political science from Asutosh College and earned a master’s from Calcutta University. He teaches at a private school.
• Das is from Birbhum. He is doing his master’s from Kalyani University. He claims he has no political background and has joined the movement solely as a student.