“I pray for her good health because the fate of our state depends on her... We want her to be fit so that she can work well. She needs to remain fit because if there is to be a prime minister from Bengal, she has the best chance.”

Speaking to journalists in Bengali, politician DILIP

GHOSH offered fulsome tribute to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on her birthday on January 5. Talking up her prime ministerial chances is par for the course, you’d imagine, for one of her sycophantic party colleagues, especially as people start jockeying for positions in the ‘grand alliance’. Except Ghosh is the local BJP president. He later tried to backtrack. He didn’t want to say anything mean on Banerjee’s birthday. And, of course, her ambitions are a pipe dream and Narendra Modi is coming back as prime minister and... Ghosh might as well own up to his Bengali parochialism, his pride in Didi. If nothing else, when the BJP drops him, he’ll have somewhere to go.