The Trinamul Congress has formed a five-member committee headed by Suri MLA and Birbhum zilla parishad chief Bikash Roy Chowdhury to look after its organisation in the district in the absence of Anubrata Mondal.
Mondal, the Birbhum district president of Trinamul, had been arrested last week in a cattle smuggling case. The new committee was constituted on Monday.
Trinamul insiders said the party had instructed the district leadership to continue running all political programmes and meetings under the five-member panel. It shows Mondal will not be replaced, at least for now, as the district president.
“The committee would look after all duties of Mondal as the district president. The party has informed that Mondal would not be replaced right away,” said one of the members on the committee. Mamata Banerjee had thrown her weight firmly behind Mondal on Sunday.
The topmost tiers of the ruling party leadership in Calcutta have been in touch with the five, now on the committee, since the CBI probe against Mondal began.
A Trinamul veteran, former Suri MLA Swapan Ghosh, who had withdrawn himself from the party for at least six years, was brought back to the mainstream and appointed a state secretary. Sources said Ghosh — known for his proximity to Abhishek Banerjee — was asked to keep a close watch on the situation on the ground.
The committee, said the member, would hold meetings in each of the Assembly constituencies in Birbhum and three in East Burdwan — that were handled directly by Mondal — in the next couple of weeks to ensure shoulders do not begin to droop in the party’s local rank and file.
Trinamul insiders said morale-booster activities were of utmost importance as dejection had begun setting in the local leadership since Mondal’s arrest. They said it had also been noticed that some local leaders were aspiring to achieve greater control of certain areas quickly in Mondal’s absence.
“We are telling block-level leaders that we will do everything necessary to keep the party machinery from malfunctioning,” said a district party functionary.
“Those who are trying to misutilise the opportunities presented by his absence have been warned, and they have been told that the top-tier leadership from Calcutta is closely monitoring the situation,” he added.
After a couple of days of uncertainty over the party’s stand with regard to Mondal, Mamata came forward in public on Sunday evening with a fiercely aggressive speech in his defence, putting to rest the ambiguity.
In a party event on the eve of Independence Day in Calcutta’s Behala, the chief minister demanded answers on his arrest, expressed the hope that “1 lakh more” Mondals would emerge on the streets for every Trinamul leader the BJP-led Centre, and pointed fingers at Union home minister Amit Shah’s office over its alleged role in allowing corrupt practices such as cattle smuggling and coal pilferage to take place. Her stand regarding Mondal was in stark contrast to that on Partha Chatterjee, the sacked and suspended Trinamul heavyweight arrested by the Enforcement Directorate last month.
“There is no leader in that belt who could be deemed a parallel of Anubrata. There is nobody we can pick right now to replace him, even if we wanted to, that would ensure a seamless, peaceful transition,” said a senior leader in Calcutta.
