In this season of book launches, particularly of those varieties that are targeting political leaders amid polling for the Lok Sabha elections, now there's one on Mamata Banerjee, written by her once-trusted lieutenant and former IAS officer Dipak Kumar Ghosh, that is likely to cause some serious embarrassment to the Trinamool Congress.
Notorious for causing occasional itch for Mamata Banerjee, Ghosh has turned personal against her, raking up some controversy with his latest book, "Three years of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee" alleging that she has lied about her school education and her family, including father's profession in some of her earlier writings.
Among other alleged falsehoods, Ghosh alleged that resignation of Ashok Kumar Ganguly, from the post of chairman of West Bengal Human Rights Commission was actually an outcome of a conspiracy hatched by Mamata as the law intern and a student of National University of Juridical Sciences who had accused Ganguly of sexual harassment in December 2012 is in fact a relative of Derek O'Brien, Trinamool national spokesperson.
In the preface, Ghosh has expressed his intention of forming a political outfit, "Amader Party'' (Our Party) after the polls and claimed many disgruntled Trinamool workers and leaders are likely to defect and join him.
Ghosh says there is severe lack of democratic principles within the Trinamool Congress and even goes on to allege that party elections are never held nor is formal membership issued. "No one can produce a membership card. Instructions by party leadership are not issued as written statements after meetings but are conveyed arbitrarily even in the dead of the night," the book, written in Bengali, said.
The book highlights the sudden rise of Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata's nephew who, he he said is a newbie but given an important constituency, Diamond Harbour, to contest.
Ghosh's writings occasionally turn into ramblings and allegations become frivolous, blunting the edge of his criticism.
Also, the publication of the book done by him appears to be a hurried job casually bound together with spiral bounding wires, which Ghosh explained away as due to shortage of printing staff on the eve of the Poila Baishak, or Bengali New Year.
That said, the book coming from a former bureaucrat, and once a party insider, is likely to add to the necessary colour that has brightened the poll jamboree.
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