MAMATA BEGINS A PURGE
The West Bengal chief minister is going after ‘traitors’, both in her party and the state administration
When the Lok Sabha election results came out, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s first reaction was disbelief. She apparently locked herself up in her room, crying, lambasting party leaders over the phone. Hadn’t they chanted “beyallishe beyallish” (42 out of 42 seats) with her? How did the BJP then get a 40 per cent vote share and 18 seats in West Bengal? Two days later, when she emerged out of her self-imposed confinement, all Mamata could say was, “I don’t accept the verdict.”
What left the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief shocked was that no one in her team had foreseen this outcome. As reality dawned, Mamata was quick to pass the buck to her party
leaders, accusing them of misinforming her. She has already expressed displeasure with some of her ministers, among them Gautam Deb, Rabindranath Ghosh, Tapan Dasgupta, Sukumar Mahato, Asima Patra, Binay Krishna Barman and Soumen Mahapatra. Mahato and Barman have been stripped of their portfolios after the defeat of TMC candidates in their areas of influence, the Purulia and Cooch Behar LS seats.
But while some ministers are being punished, others such as Suvendu Adhikary and Subrata Mukherjee, seen as possible fence-sitters, have got away. Incidentally, the duo, along with two other party MPs, had earlier evinced interest in joining the BJP, allegedly to escape investigation by central agencies. With the Saradha and Narada scams probe getting new
energy from the Modi government’s re-election, some TMC leaders accused in the scam may feel tempted to jump ship. The change in the BJP’s fortunes and the wave of anti-incumbency against the TMC has generated a lot of interest, cutting across political allegiance. So far, four MLAs, including two from the TMC, and 50 civic councillors have joined the BJP. “We will have hordes of people joining us through the seven phases,” BJP leader Mukul Roy had predicted, claiming at the time that a 100 TMC MLAs were in touch with them.
Such claims have made Mamata hit the panic button. Desperate to keep her flock together, she’s trying to isolate the “traitors”. But this could lead to further desertions. As a senior party leader says, “Going by the Lok Sabha results, the party has suffered losses in 129 assembly segments (out of a total 294) while in 60 others, the TMC scraped through by a margin of 4,000 votes. Can you imagine what will happen if she starts taking action in all these cases .... ” But Mamata has no reason to panic. The TMC has a massive majority now, 200-plus MLAs in the 295-seat house.
The West Bengal CM is now holding counselling sessions for party leaders to lift their morale. To combat the RSS network in rural Bengal, she is raising, for the first time, a TMC social service wing, the Jai Hind and Banga Janani Vahini. Mamata is seeing traitors not just in the party but also in the administration. She has transferred 43 IPS officers, including the 11 officers taken off from poll duty by the Election Commission. In fact, Bidhannagar saw its police commissioner change four times in four days. She has also sent three IAS officers on central deputation after sitting on the files for a year or so. “She doesn’t trust the officers. She feels a section of administrative officers was hand-in-glove with the EC to frustrate her party,” says a senior bureaucrat, requesting anonymity. Many officers see a situation similar to the one that prevailed in the last phase of the Left Front government. “Instead of getting down to administrative work, the bureaucracy is hopping from one chair to another,” one of them says.
Political analysts believe Mamata’s “emotional reaction” to the situation is only giving the BJP more mileage and will hurt her more. “Her actions are completely irrational,” says Sovonlal Gupta, ex-professor of political science at Calcutta University.
MAMATA HAS SHIFTED 43 IPS MEN. ONE AREA SAW FOUR COMMISSIONERS IN FOUR DAYS