Dogged by charges of corruption, the TMC has launched one of its biggest “cleansing” drives since its inception and a massive mass outreach campaign to rebuild its image ahead of the panchayat polls this year and Lok Sabha polls next year.

The exercise comes when it has lost its national party status and its leaders are battling allegations of graft both in and outside courts.

Senior leaders like former minister Partha Chatterjee, two other MLAs, and Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal were arrested in connection with cases of school jobs scam and cattle smuggling since last year.

After conducting a few internal surveys, including one by political consultancy group I-PAC, to assess the functioning and conduct of its elected representatives and leaders at all levels of village council elections, the TMC recently launched a campaign where the party would choose candidates based on the feedback of people through a secret ballot system.

Leading the mass outreach programme "Trinamool-e Nabajowar" (new wave in Trinamool) from the front is the party's national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who will crisscross the entire state for several weeks, and seek feedback from the masses on their preferable candidates, whom the party will nominate.

"This is for the first time that the party has launched a rectification drive to weed out rotten elements on such a grand scale. This will help us reach out to the people and address their grievances. It will also help build a stronger connection with the masses by validating their choices and aspirations," senior TMC leader Sougata Roy told PTI.

Roy said the choice of candidates for nearly 78,000 seats in the three-tier panchayat elections would be based on the feedback from the secret ballot system that is being undertaken during the campaign.

"There will be a massive change in the candidate list. It is quite likely that nearly 50 per cent might be new faces," he said.

Under the secret ballot system, voters, party workers, and local influencers will vote to choose their TMC nominees from their respective areas.

"This system will revolutionise the Panchayati Raj system in West Bengal and be an example for the entire country. It will weed out corruption and build a people's panchayat as Mahatma Gandhi had envisioned," Abhishek Banerjee said during a rally in Cooch Behar.

TMC state vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar also said even though organisational overhaul was on since August last year, the "cleansing of the party" is the second stage of building a “new Trinamool Congress" that Abhishek Banerjee has been talking about for the last one year.

"It is not that all the allegations of corruption are true, but certain instances have brought a bad reputation to the party. So, the party which entered its 25th year decided to axe those with not so clean image from various levels of public representation and bring in fresh faces with a good image among the masses," he said.

According to Majumdar, apart from the rectification drive, the party has also identified the minority and women community for conducting a special outreach campaign.

"Minority party workers were scattered at various levels of the organisation. Some were with the youth wing, some with the main party, and some with the youth and women wing. The party is now working towards creating a combined data bank of its minority supporters and party workers across the state," he said.

Majumdar said the idea behind creating a data bank of one lakh minority party workers first came up after the Sagardighi by-poll results, where Congress had snatched the minority-dominated seat from the TMC.

"The Sagardighi defeat was mainly due to a misinformation campaign by the opposition, which we failed to counter. The data bank will ensure that a proper mechanism of feedback and communication remains intact between the party leadership and the community," he said, adding that the data bank of one lakh minority supporters is almost complete.

Opponents BJP, Congress and the Left mocked the ruling party over its cleansing drive.

"The TMC is neck deep in corruption. Just cutting down a few branches would not yield any result. The entire tree of corruption needs to be uprooted, and only the BJP can do it,” BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar told PTI.

The TMC, after being in power for 11 years, is suddenly carrying out this rectification drive, though the party was charged with corruption from the very beginning, CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said adding “These are attempts to fool the people." State Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said, "Corruption is a part of the TMC’s culture " and such campaigns are a gimmick to divert people's attention from graft cases.

Political scientist Biswanath Chakraborty felt that the rectification exercise might not yield desired results as the party may have spoken about zero tolerance to corruption, but it is yet to implement it.

"This is unlikely to help the TMC as those at the forefront of the campaign themselves are having corruption charges against them," he said.

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