Tag: West Bengal politics

  • BJP leader Rajib Banerjee meets Trinamool ranks over possible return to parent party

    By Express News Service
    KOLKATA: Less than 24 hours after Mukul Roy returned to the TMC, the saffron camp received another jolt on Saturday evening as BJP leader Rajib Banerjee, a former minister in Mamata’s cabinet, met TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh. The organizational foundation of the Bengal BJP, which largely rested on the shoulders of the turncoats from the Trinamool Congress, has been shaken to the core with many of them expressing a desire to return to their old party and a few even snapping all contacts with the saffron camp. 

    Some of the former TMC MLAs who joined the BJP have tendered their apologies to the Mamata Banerjee-led party.  According to sources, many of them have started skipping organizational meetings called by state BJP president Dilip Ghosh.  Rajib was among the state BJP members who criticized the demand from some in the party for the imposition of the president’s rule in West Bengal.

    After meeting Ghosh, Rajib said, “I oppose the demand for imposing presidential rule in Bengal. Because the ruling party has come to power with massive support. At the same time, I do not support the party’s Hindutva rhetoric.’’ 

    The crack in the saffron camp started widening rapidly after the party’s poor show in the recent Assembly elections. The BJP bagged 77 seats out of 292, far less than the 200 predicted by the big guns in the party.Soon after the election, former TMC MLAs Dipendu Biswas and Sonali Guha resigned from the BJP and said they wanted to return to the TMC. 

    With Roy’s returning to the TMC, the ruling party is expecting an exodus from the BJP When Roy was in Trinamool Bhavan on Friday, BJP’s state president Dilip Ghosh convened an organisation meeting in Bongaon, North 24 Parganas, which was skipped by three local MLAs and a local MP.

  • Suvendu Adhikari meets PM Modi in Delhi, discusses political dynamics

    By ANI

    NEW DELHI: Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly and BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his official residence in New Delhi on Wednesday.

    According to sources, the two leaders discussed the alleged violence against BJP workers in West Bengal post Assembly elections and political dynamics in the state.

    On Tuesday, Adhikari met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and several other union ministers and BJP leaders in Delhi.

    Adhikary arrived in the national capital late on Monday night.

    Last week, Suvendu Adhikari submitted a representation about post-poll retributive violence to West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar.

    Several incidents of violence after the declaration of the state’s Assembly poll results have been reported.

    Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleged that several of its party workers have been killed in the violence. However, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) has denied the allegations.

    The state government, on May 25, had informed the Supreme Court that three people have been arrested in connection with the alleged killing of two BJP workers in post-election violence on May 2 in the state. 

  • ‘Mistake to have joined BJP’: After Sonali Guha, now Sarala Murmu wants to rejoin TMC 

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: With the TMC having emerged victorious with a thumping majority in the recently concluded assembly elections, turncoats who had quit the party to join the BJP seem to be making a beeline for re-entry into the Mamata Banerjee camp, the latest being Sarala Murmu.

    Murmu, who had switched camp as she was reportedly unhappy with the ticket that was given to her by the ruling party, has expressed her desire to return to the TMC, a day after Banerjee’s former aide, Sonali Guha, made a similar appeal.

    Claiming that it was a mistake on her part to have joined the BJP, Murmu said that she wants party supremo Mamata Banerjee to pardon her.

    “If she accepts me, I will stay with her and work for the party diligently,” Murmu told reporters at her Malda home. Murmu was nominated from Habibpur seat in Malda, but party sources had then claimed that she was keen on contesting the election from Maldaha constituency.

    “I committed a mistake and want Didi (Banerjee) to pardon me for that,” she said.

    Former TMC MLA Sonali Guha had on Saturday written to Banerjee, apologising to her for leaving the party.

    The four-time MLA from Satgachhia in South 24 Parganas district, in a letter which she also shared on social media, said, “The way a fish cannot stay out of the water, I will not be able to live without you, ‘Didi’.

    I seek your forgiveness and if you don’t forgive me, I won’t be able to live.

    Please allow me to come back, and spend the rest of my life in your affection.

  • Buddha and what’s left of the citadel

    Express News Service
    WEST BENGAL: Between the binary of a ladaku neta (the war-like Mamata Banerjee) and the PM’s fort-destroyer act, complete with taunts and slogans, there’s another figure who’s also in the contest quite strangely, in his absence. He is Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

    The 77-year-old former West Bengal CM’s failing health especially respiratory trouble in this Covid season has kept him away from the public stage. All that has come from him by way of intervention in this election season is a statement. He shot a single arrow, talking of “the unravelling of the Singur-Nandigram conspiracy”, and the irony of “the conspirators now fighting each other” in the silence of the graveyard.

    Where did he find ‘silence’ in this deafeningly high-decibel contest? What he refers to is the silence the lack of any discussion, amidst this very personalised campaign on what he believes to be the real issue. That is, the derailed industrialisation of Bengal.

    His own attempt to reverse that, beginning from Singur-Nandigram, was a dark and fated one: it had cost Buddhadeb his government and led to his ignominious exit from electoral politics. He had even lost the Jadavpur seat to his former chief secretary, Manish Gupta, by a margin of over 16,000 votes. That was in 2011, when Mamata swept into power on what was called a mandate for paribartan (change).

    Ten years down the line, the BJP is riding on the idea of asol paribartan (real change). If that sounds like an echo, there are reasons why it resonates. They are the same reasons from a decade ago. Jobless youth are the most common sight everywhere in the state even though Bengal’s unemployment, if CMIE data is to be believed, is less than that of Haryana, Rajasthan or Bihar. Indeed, at 17.4% as per the CMIE 2020 annual survey, Bengal’s unemployment is even less than the national average. But it’s nearly double compared to neighbouring Odisha and Assam’s 9.6%. Take the group of youth, all graduates, whiling away their time around a tea stall outside one of Bishnupur’s famous terracotta temples. None of them have jobs or any hope of getting one anytime soon. They debate over what ‘Buddhababu’ wanted to do for West Bengal and could not. “Nobody thought about it quite the same way. If he had succeeded, none of us would have been unemployed, more industry would have come…rajya kothai pouchhe jeto (what heights the state would have scaled!).” From the Nano factory shifting to Sanand, Gujarat, becoming part of the triumphal lore around Narendra Modi, to him now coming to wrest Bengal as PM, irony has come a full circle.

    All in their mid and late 20s, Simanta Das, Arjun Ghosh, Sudip and Shankar Pal, must’ve been in high school or college when the Left Front lost power. But Buddhadeb and the Singur- Nandigram fiasco is still a discussion point in their casual afternoon conversations.

    Does that mean the Sanjukta Morcha candidate has a winning chance? They’re not quite sure, except maybe in certain pockets. Buddhadeb, however, is a figure of underlying nostalgia, even though neither the Left nor the Morcha (Congress- Left-ISF alliance) is mining it.

    In Bankura district, in South 24 Parganas, Burdwan or Howrah, as well as up north, the Morcha claims it will post surprising results, particularly in the rural seats. But nowhere have they been tapping that old sentiment. The CPI-M, the main Left constituent, has gone ahead with a ‘new experiment’. Just like in Kerala, it has fielded several young articulate faces here who can talk about the ‘real issues’ with passion — unemployment, livelihood, privatisation, rising prices, tumbling economy, farm laws, the perils of caste and communal politics in a state like Bengal which has known the nightmare of riots, particularly on the cusp of Independence.

    They are quite a visible, audible presence. Start from Nandigram (Meenakshi Mukherjee), and go on to Singur (Srijan Bhattacharya), Bally (Dipsita Dhar), Jamuria (Aishe Ghosh), Kamarhati (Sayandip Mitra), Diamond Harbour (Pratikur Rehman), Rajarhat Newtown (Saptarshi Deb), Kasba (Shatarup Ghosh), Burdwan Dakshin (Pritha Tah) some of the seats already polled. There are those who feel, citing their youth, that they would need grooming to learn the ropes of electoral politics. “It’s a gamble that may pay off five-seven years down the line, when the levers of the state CPI(M) will have to pass on from the ageing leadership,” says a Left sympathiser, referring to the old warhorses Biman Bose and Surja Kanta Mishra.

    The support for the Left in colleges and university campuses — from JNU to Jadavpur here — and among a section of the youth in general has come as a breather for that ageing Left leadership, often called the ‘geriatric club’ in jest.

    “This one move is expected to sustain the party in the coming years, it’s a much-needed infusion of young blood,” says Nilanjan Dutta, who’s followed Left politics in the state with academic interest. Dipsita Dhar, CPI(M) candidate in Bally, Howrah (a district where BJP hopes to do well), affirms that: “Working for strengthening the organisation, standing by the people, the farmers in their struggle, is of prime importance.” When camp-switching is the sort of thing that makes headlines, that’s a kind of throwback line.

    In Santiniketan, Birbhum, Subas Sen is no Left activist. He’s attached to the boutique business, and openly nurses a grouse against the TMC’s “autocratic local neta”, but yet is slightly uncomfortable with the BJP’s “Hindutva-cum pro-big business agenda”. Sen laments about Buddhadeb’s “failed industrialisation”. It has left many like him bitter. “Politics is no place for bhadralok. Buddhababu is an example of that. If he had acted like Amit Shah, the state’s industrialisation wouldn’t have been stalled. There would have been jobs for the youth, ancillary units, what not,” he says.

    Miles away, in Deganga Assembly constituency of North 24 Parganas, the Forward Bloc’s party festoons surprise young driver Choton. So much so that he parks his sedan to find out which “new party” the symbol belongs to! The familiarity with the Forward Bloc flag has obviously waned in the last 10 years. “Oh! Left Front’s Forward Bloc,” he exclaims, a tad embarrassed. He hastens to cover up, and again that refrain: “Buddhababu is a good man, he tried to do something.”

    In the minority-dominated areas of Deganga, they assert their “vote is for Didi” and “jamait (gathering) for Bhai Jaan”, that is, Abbas Siddiqui of the Indian Secular Front, part of the Left-Congress alliance. TMC candidate Rahima Mandol, who defeated the FB candidate in the previous election, is pitted against the BJP’s Dipika Chatterjee this time. The newly floated ISF of ‘Abbas Baba’ has fielded Karim Ali. Deganga is part of the Barasat Lok Sabha constituency, represented by the TMC’s rather popular MP, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar.

    The Left’s tie-up with the Furfura Sharif cleric Abbas Siddiqui is turning out to be a double- edged sword. The idea was to win back the atraf or azlaf votes — the Muslim peasantry — which went over to TMC in 2011, partly out of fear of Buddhadeb’s land acquisition policy. Traditional Left voters are reacting to the alliance with a Muslim cleric, they see it as a regressive, anti-secular step. The younger campus returnees, however, see it as extending support to a budding Muslim-Dalit politics. One of the Left leaders claimed, “With us, he’ll remain true to the ‘secular’ tag of his party.”

    In Purbo Burdwan, once a Left bastion, the fight on the surface is only a TMC-BJP one. Here, a group of young Left supporters are holding an artisanal fair to create an ambience, and convince rural voters of the need to regain lost ground. Here again,‘Buddhada’ is remembered.

    Even more surprisingly, top business leaders in Kolkata, in their private conversations, hark back to the ‘lost opportunity’ created by Buddhababu’s vision. “It’s unfortunate that neither his party nor his central leadership supported him. He was sabotaged from within and pilloried from outside,” one of them says.

    None of them are ready to go on record with their political views, given the divisive tenor of the campaign. Sujan Chakraborty, the CPI(M)’s current legislative party leader who’s contesting from Jadavpur (Buddhadeb’s old seat), is candid enough to admit the former CM cannot be blamed for what went wrong. It was a “collective decision”. Chakraborty and his young comrades are creating quite a ripple, thanks to civil rights groups, musicians, and theatre and film artistes who’ve come out in direct or tangential support of the Left with jingles and viral videos. So is former MP, politburo member Mohammed Salim, contesting from Chanditala, Hoogly, also the face of the CPI(M) campaign this election. Or Ashok Bhattacharya in his home turf, Siliguri. It may not result in a big electoral victory in terms of seats, but the Left hopes to get back some of the 27 per cent vote that it, in a way, gifted to the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The correlation was as direct as it could get: the BJP got 28 per cent votes, the Left lost 27 per cent.

    Little wonder, then, that the BJP’s latest song video circulating on social media platforms starring Babul Supriyo, Asansol MP and union minister who’s now contesting from Tollygunge constituency in Kolkata targets the Left, and not the TMC.

  • Bengal will never bow down before outsiders: TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee attacks BJP

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday said his party will not bow down before “outsiders”, and asserted that his aunt and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will win the election battle, no matter what challenges are thrown before her.

    The TMC, which has made ‘Bengali pride’ its core poll plank, has tagged the BJP as a “party of outsiders”, as its top leaders hail from outside the state.

    The TMC MP, who took part in a rally here, also urged people to put up a united fight against the CPI(M) and its ally, the Congress, and claimed that the communist regime had perpetrated atrocities on the poor peasants of the state, citing the Nandigram movement of 2007.

    “We will not bow down before the BJP, we will not bow down before the outsiders,” he said at the start of the rally, which was attended by Mamata Banerjee on a wheel chair.

    The CM had sustained severe injuries during electioneering in Nandigram, where she has crossed swords with her protege-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari.

    ALSO READ | ‘Injured tiger more dangerous’: Mamata Banerjee leads TMC’s Kolkata march on wheelchair

    Shouting slogans such as ‘Modi babu ashe Modi babu Jay, Bangla nijer meyeke chay’ (PM Modi may come and go, Bengal wants its daughter to rule the state), the Diamond Harbour MP said, “Despite her serious foot injury, our leader has joined the rally. She will conquer the battle notwithstanding her injuries.”

  • West Bengal: Good riddance barb draws two goodbyes

    By Express News Service
    KOLKATA: Hardly 24 hours after the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s ‘good riddance’ remark on turncoats, two more legislators added their names to the long list of defectors. While Santiur (Nadia) MLA Arindam Banerjee reached Delhi on Wednesday and joined the saffron camp.

    Diamond Harbour legislator Dipak Haldar is likely to switch to BJP during a rally at Baruipur in South 24-Parganas on Thursday.

    Bhattacharya, who was elected on Congress ticket in 2016 and later had defected to the TMC, said, “When people like me quit their profession and join politics, they come with a vision. I joined politic to uplift the lot of the people of my constituency. My repeated pleas to the leadership to address the malpractices and corruption had always fallen on deaf years. Hence, the decision to join BJP.”

    Haldar, too, had been vocal about his discontent over the party leadership.

    ‘Goli Maaro’ chants mar adhikari rally

    In an ominous signal of the Bengal electoral battle being marred by violence, “goli maaro…” chants were raised at TMC and BJP rallies, though both parties distanced themselves from the slogan.

    At a rally led by Suvendu Adhikari in Chandannagar on Wednesday, the slogan “desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro…” (shoot the traitors) was allegedly raised by a few BJP cadre.

  • Miffed Trinamool Congress MP Satabdi Roy named state unit vice-president

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Three time Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Satabdi Roy, who has called a truce with the party after a brief rebellion that triggered speculations of her crossing over to the BJP, was on Sunday appointed vice-president of the West Bengal unit of the ruling Trinamool Congress.

    Expressing happiness over the news, Roy told reporters, she will work as a dedicated worker of the party and ensure defeat of the BJP in the coming assembly polls.

    “If you take up the matter concerning the party with the top leadership, it is addressed. This development proves that. I welcome the decision,” Roy said on her appointment as the state unit vice-president in the reshuffle.

    Roy, an actor-turned-politician and a leading face in the Mamata Banerjee’s cultural brigade, is the third consecutive term Lok Sabha member from Birbhum.

    She had snatched the Birbhum seat from CPM heavyweight Ram Chandra Dome in 2009 on debut and managed to win it by an overwhelming margin in 2019, even as the BJP had routed the Trinamool Congress in the nearby constituencies.

    Roy was among the prominent leaders who had joined Banerjee’s Singur and Nandigram movement in 2009 that ended the Left Front rule and catapulted the feisty Bengal leader to power in the state. The Birbhum MP had voiced dissent Friday over not being informed about the party events in her constituency which she said caused “mental pain”.

    In a Facebook post she had said that she will inform the public Saturday if she takes any “decision”, following which the jittered Trinamool Congress leaders had started reaching out to her. She changed her stance and expressed full confidence in the leadership of Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee after meeting the Diamond Harbour MP Friday evening.

    TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh had also met Roy to dissuade her from leaving the party.

    After hammering a solution to her grievances, Roy had Saturday praised Abhishek Banerjee, who is nephew of the chief minister, for giving her a patient hearing and said she “is pleased with the way the young leader assured” her of resolving all the issues.

    Returning satisfied after a two-hour long meeting with Abhishek Banerjee she had made it clear that she will remain with the Trinamool Congress. She also admonished party colleagues having problems like her to discuss the issues with the party instead of looking for other options.

    The actor-politician had said it would be “unethical to look for other options” when the party is facing a tough fight. Polls to 294-member Bengal assembly are due in April-May.

    Banerjee’s party is witnessing exodus of its disgruntled leaders to a resurgent saffron party which is making all efforts to win the state after an impressive performance in the 2019 Parliamentary election winning 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in Bengal, only four less than the TMC tally of 22.

    Last month, Suvendu Adhikari, along with 35 party leaders including five MLAs and an MP, joined the BJP, setting off a churning as several disgruntled leaders rallied behind him. In the rejig in the TMC, the party announced new names for the state committee which included Moazzem Hossain and Shankar Chakraborty in addition to Satabdi Roy.

    In another significant development, former administrator of Asansol Municipal Corporation and Trinamool leader Jitendra Tiwari, who had voiced discontent over running of the civic board and had even met Suvendu Adhikari and Sunil Mondal on the eve of their joining BJP on December 17, has been removed from the post of district president of Paschim Bardhaman.

    Tiwari, who had iterated to work for TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee after a meeting with the party leadership in the last week of December, has been replaced by Apurba Mukhopadhyay as the TMC district president. “This decision has been taken as I did not take back my resignation letter as the administrator. As an MLA and an ordinary worker, I will continue to serve my organization,” Tiwari said.

    Asked about the appointment of Roy and other leaders in the state committee and new faces in the district committees, Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee said, “It is an organisational matter. Why should we discuss this with the media?”

  • Parleys yield fruit, Satabdi Roy stays with TMC

    By Express News Service
    KOLKATA: TMC MP Satabdi Roy sought to dismiss specualtion surrounding her imminent exit from Mamata Banerjee’s team by issuing a statement on Friday evening that she was very much with the ruling party. The statement came after she held a meeting with chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee.

    “I expressed my grievances and I was assured that the issues would be sorted out. I am not going to Delhi tomorrow,” she said. Earlier, the two-time MP from Birbhum had posted a cryptic message on social media, highlighting how she has been kept out of loop about party affairs, before declaring she would visit Delhi, where “she might or might not meet” Union Home Minister Amit Shah. 

    ALSO READ | TMC MP Satabdi Roy hints at problems with party, may take ‘decision’ on Saturday

    As per party sources, Roy is having differences with Birbhum district TMC chief Anubrata Mondal. “Of late, many people have been asking me why I am not seen in party events. I tell them I want to go everywhere. But I guess some people don’t want me to go. I don’t get details of the party’s regular events,” she had posted.

    Cryptic message The two-time MP from Birbhum had posted a cryptic message, highlighting how she has been kept out of loop about party affairs, before declaring she would visit Delhi, where “she might or might not meet” Amit Shah

  • Sakshi Maharaj says Owaisi’s AIMIM will help BJP in UP, West Bengal

    Express News Service
    LUCKNOW: Welcoming the proposed move of All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) to contest UP panchayat polls likely to take place March-April, this year, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Unnao Sakshi Maharaj said that AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi had helped the saffron party in Bihar and he would continue to do so in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal as well.

    The BJP MP’s comments were made in response to the Hyderabad MP’s party actively entering the political fray in the northern state. While interacting with media persons in Kannauj while on his way to Delhi, Maharaj said, “May God give more strength to Owaisi. He has helped us in Bihar and will do so in UP and Bengal.”

    READ HERE | Owaisi’s AIMIM may jump into UP panchayat poll fray

    Owaisi had been on a day-long  trip to eastern UP districts including Varanasi, Mau, Jaunpur and Azamgarh on Tuesday to strengthen his party’s base ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls in the state. He had even charged Samajwadi Party president and former UP CM Akhilesh Yadav with barring him from coming to UP 12 times.

    “When Akhilesh Yadav’s government was in power in the state, we were stopped from coming to the state 12 times. Now, I have arrived. I have come to keep my commitment with SBSP president Om Prakash Rajbhar,” Owaisi had said in Varanasi.

    ALSO READ | Owaisi says Akhilesh stopped him from visiting UP 12 times during his regime

    Owaisi had struck an alliance with the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP)  — Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha — for the Assembly polls in Bihar. Even Bahujan Samaj Party had also contested Bihar polls in alliance with Owaisi. The other smaller outfits in the Morcha included former UP Minister Babu Singh Kushwaha’s Jan Adhikar Party, Babu Ram Pal’s Rashtriya Uday Party, Anil Singh Chauhan’s Janata Kranti Party and Premchand Prajapati’s Rashtriya Upekshit Samaj Party. Rajbhar and Owaisi had recently met in Lucknow to chalk out final terms of the alliance in the wake of 2022 UP Assembly elections.

  • Mamata Banerjee plays CAA card to win back Matua support

    By Express News Service
    KOLKATA: Ratcheting up her rhetoric against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Mamata Banerjee on Monday fired a fresh volley at the BJP in an attempt to draw the Matua population away from the saffron camp. Matuas are Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh counting on the implementation of CAA to gain Indian citizenship, a desire the BJP capitalised on during the last Lok Sabha election. 

    “Why do you (Matua) need citizenship? You are already citizens,” said Mamata, addressing the electorate at Ranaghat in Nadia on Monday. Mamata’s Monday rally was an attempt to regain the ground it lost to BJP in Nadia in the last hustings. “I will never allow the BJP to implement CAA or NRC. It (BJP) is trying to hoodwink people,” she said at what was her citadel before the saffron wave swept across the region, which accounts for over 40 per cent of the Matua electorate that supported the BJP in 2019. 

    Tapping into the simmering discontent among the Matuas over the delay in the implementation of CAA, Mamata reiterated her position that the Act would entail the Centre demanding documents related to date of birth of elderly parents. “Most of them do not have such documents. If your parents fail to submit the documents, they will be driven out of the country. So, in the upcoming elections, drive the BJP out of Bengal to protect your family,” she said. 

    Mamata has been into an overdrive to draw the Matuas away from the BJP by playing up their citizenship fears. Last month, she addressed a rally in Bongaon in North 24 Parganas and on Monday, she was in Ranaghat. Electorate at both the seats is predominantly Matua and Dalit immigrants from Bangladesh. Mamta’s attempt is aided by the studied silence maintained by the BJP leadership. Recently, BJP MP from Bongaon Shantanu Thakur had expressed his discontent over the delay and hinted at possible shift in Matuas’ political allegiance.