The Trinamul Congress has set for itself a goal of reaching out to one crore people in Bengal and organising over 100 programmes in at least half a dozen states for the Martyrs’ Day on Wednesday so that the message of Mamata Banerjee is spread far and wide in the wake of the party’s landslide victory in the Assembly elections.
July 21 used to be observed every year by Trinamul since its inception through a mega rally at Esplanade in Calcutta in remembrance of 13 people killed in police firing in 1993 during a Youth Congress rally led by Mamata. For the second year in a row, the event has to be virtual on account of the pandemic.
“We would reach out to at least one crore people in Bengal this year through over one lakh small-scale programmes, from where the speech of our supreme leader Mamata Banerjee would be telecast. There would be events in Delhi and other states too. This is above and beyond the reach through social and mainstream media,” said Trinamul’s national spokesperson Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, who is in charge of handling one of these events in Lucknow of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday.
Last year, Mamata had claimed she had been able to reach at least 50 lakh people through the virtual conduct of the event.
This year, in the wake of Trinamul’s historic victory — and the drubbing handed to the BJP — that ensured her third consecutive stint as chief minister, Mamata is likely to go all out in her attack against the saffron camp and its running of the nation.
Senior leaders said among various raging issues, the controversy over the alleged hack via Pegasus was likely to feature prominently in her address.
They said the party had directed smaller units to organise as many small programmes as possible, with TV sets or giant screens in districts, to avoid violation of Covid-19 safety protocols.
Besides Bengal, the virtual event would be observed at venues such as the Constitution Club of Delhi, and at least 25 venues in Uttar Pradesh, besides states like Tripura, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.
Trinamul said several leaders of various parties in the non-BJP political space would be present at the Constitution Club.
“Many leaders of our friendly parties would attend the programme at the Constitution Club, with us. They wished to attend the programme and listen to Mamata Banerjee,” said Derek O’Brien, Trinamul’s leader in Rajya Sabha.
Trinamul sources said the move to organise the show on July 21 in Delhi and at hundreds of places in several other states was part of an exercise to gauge the level of appreciation for her after she single-handedly forced the saffron electoral juggernaut to a grinding halt outside Bengal’s gates.
The sources said since the victory in the Assembly elections, people of many states, including key leaders of non-BJP parties, started inviting her for campaign. “The programmes in the other states are being organised following the proposals from people of those states, as the people there want to listen to Mamata Banerjee,” said Roy, the chief whip of Trinamul in the Rajya Sabha.
Trinamul leaders in various districts of Bengal said they had a bitter experience last year in pockets where the BJP had gained in strength since the Lok Sabha election of 2019, mainly in the Jungle Mahal, north Bengal and in some districts such as Hooghly and Nadia. In those places, Trinamul had not been able to organise programmes in hundreds of booths, allegedly on account of the BJP’s atrocities. In some of those places, such as Purulia, Jhargram and Bankura, several Trinamul workers were allegedly beaten up by BJP workers and driven away from their villages before July 21.
However, this year, the same Trinamul leaders have been getting requests from those areas, where BJP supporters are keen to switch flags in the wake of the results.
“The tables have turned, and how. We are organising the programme in every booth where the BJP stopped us last year,” said Raju Singh, the Trinamul’s youth wing chief in Bankura.
