MamaTa dOeS nOT WanT OLd PhOTOS

No woman likes to tell her correct age. And women also do not like to be told that they are overweight. The 63-year-old West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is no exception. Didi is said to be upset with some supporters “for displaying her old picture on their Facebook pages.” She feels she looks “not slim” in these pictures. It is learnt that the CM signalled her disapproval of the picture when she saw it first on the Trinamool Congress party secretary-general Partha Chatterjee’s office wall.

Soon, Mamata’s office sent instruction to party offices and government departments “to replace CM’s old pictures with new ones”. But the office forgot social media in this exercise. Sources said that fresh instructions have now been issued to the TMC supporters “to replace Didi’s fat pictures on the Facebook with new ones”.

Meanwhile, Mamata has written a play script which highlights the TMC government’s development initiatives. The street play is a major component of the party’s hectic campaign in the rural belt for the panchayat polls. It also makes fun of the Opposition parties. Well known theatre personality and the state IT Minister Bratya Basu is supervising this initiative. Over 100 folk state and street theatre groups are taking part in Didi’s drama. On the other hand, a theatre actress and BJP worker, Aditi Mukherjee, has alleged that she is being harassed by the police regularly “for playing Mamata Banerjee in a street play on the Rohingya refugees’ issue”.

Mukherjee was asked by the CID to appear at the state police headquarters at Bhavani Bhavan. “The CM attacks the Modi government for destroying democracy. But look at the state of democracy in her own state,” says BJP’s Shamik Bhattacharya, who was a member of the state legislative Assembly from the Basirhat Dakshin constituency in North 24 Parganas.