From Ashis Biswas
KOLKATA: Under severe political pressure and feeling vulnerable, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee has reacted characteristically, by going on the offensive against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
During the last few weeks, Ms Banerjee, as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, has been keeping away from the media. Her leadership and the role of her party, in the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam and the unpardonable administrative failure to locate a functioning Islamic terror module in Burdwan, are now under a hostile public scrutiny.
The political credibility and reputation of the TMC had taken a major hit over the biggest chit fund scam in India. The apparently active involvement of party bigwigs in encouraging and prolonging the money collection drive from largely poor depositors is the major reason for this. The state Government’s desperate efforts to stop a CBI probe into the Saradha affairs strongly suggested the ruling party’s apparent complicity.
The state government, probably the poorest in India in terms of its resource mobilisation vis-a-vis its debt burden to the centre, spent Rs 11 crores of taxpayers’ money by way of legal costs to keep the CBI out — unsuccessfully. Since the CBI began its work, several arrests have been made and startling disclosures of how the massive fraud was conducted in the media have hurt the TMC very badly.
The Burdwan blast on October 2 could not have occurred at a worse time for the TMC. With the party already on the back foot, its reputation in tatters, the utter failure (some allege criminal complicity, again!) of the state administration to tackle the most serious challenge to national security shocked the country! “Not only is the TMC seen to be corrupt, but its role and performance in governance now pose a serious threat to India’s security,” says a Security analyst.
How does the charge of complicity with foreign-based anti-national terrorists arise against the ruling TMC?
The answer is simple and lies in the reaction to the Burdwan blast and subsequent moves made by the West Bengal Government itself.
First the district police dismissed it as a gas cylinder explosion. Then it resorted to another lie, claiming that two groups of people had been fighting, using bombs! The police, too scared to move in against two armed women, delayed one hour in finally entering the damaged household, by which time the inmates had tampered with plenty of evidence.
And when realising the gravity of the situation the centre sent a National Investigation Agency(NIA) team, the district police clearly under orders ‘from above'(read Chief Minister who holds the police portfolio) , resorted to non-co-operational stonewalling. As a result the NIA team could not really get going before a week, during which time the main handlers of the terrorists and their associates made good their escape. As investigators visited madrasas and other hideouts in Burdwan, Murshidabad and Nadia, they could not catch the people they were after.
The TMC has been caught in the worst kind of political double whammy, as it were. It was being perceived as a none too honest party post Saradha money scam. Now it stands accused of being anti-national, by omission or commission! No wonder the normally loquacious Chief Minister did not meet the media for days.
Finally she decided to emerge, in two meetings. One of these was attended by TMC MLAs, MPs and Kolkata Corporation councillors, and the other was a workers’ meeting. The message from the chief minister was interesting and instructive.
Out of 141 Kolkata Corporation wards, the outcome of recent elections indicate that the BJP leads in 26 and lies second in 56 more. What is more the losing margin of the BJP’s defeat in some of the 56 wards is rather narrow. “What were you people doing all this time a certain party has gained ground, were you sleeping?’ asked an irate Chief Minister. She urged upon them to meet people intensively and complete all pending work and projects in double quick time, with civic elections getting near.
At the second meeting, she asserted that no one from the TMC had taken Saradha scam money. She believed that leaders like Mukul Roy and Madan Mitra, against whom damaging reports have appeared in the media, as innocent. The smear campaign all a conspiracy cooked up by the BJP and the media. No matter what happened, she would always speak out against the centre and the BJP. She would not allow riots to take place in Bengal.
Opposition leaders said Ms Banerjee had nothing new to say, even to her partymen. She would naturally claim to be innocent regarding the Saradha scam. As the investigation was continuing and conducted by an agency not under her control like the state police, her defence of her colleagues did not mean very much. Nor for that matter, her old slogans against the BJP which she had been using from the time of the Lok Sabha polls, made any difference. They had not stopped the BJP from raising its share of votes from 4% in 2009 to nearly 17% in 2014. Her remarks were only intended to improve the palpably sagging morale within the TMC. (IPA Service)
