The latest addition to her party from the film industry could be Bengali actress Debashree Roy.
Union railway minister and Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee is wooing tinsel town like never before. The latest addition to her party from the film industry could be Bengali actress Debashree Roy.
Roy met Mamata a few days back. Since then, rumours are doing the rounds that she could be a probable candidate for the Alipore by-election, since actor Tapas Paul vacated the seat after becoming an MP in May.
Debashree Roy, incidentally, is the aunt of Bollywood heart-throb Rani Mukherjee, and an actress in her own right, having played Satyavati in BR Chopra’s epic serial Mahabharata that used to be aired years ago.
On Saturday, Roy was seen with a retinue of Tollywood (from Tollygunge Studios, the home of Bengali film industry) stalwarts like Prasenjit (yesteryear’s actor Biswajit’s son), Bengal’s one-time screen goddess Supriya Devi and new-age stars like Jeet and Rachana Banerjee, at the inauguration of the Garia Metro Rail station on Saturday.
The Garia Metro station is named after screen legend Uttam Kumar. Mamata announced on Saturday that a railways hospital at Chanditala and a railways stadium at Behala, both in northwest Kolkata, will be named after film directors Tapan Sinha and Satyajit Ray respectively.
Trinamool sources told DNA that Debashree could be a probable candidate for the Alipore assembly seat since it has come to be recognised as a tinsel town constituency. For the last 10 years, it had been a domain for actor Tapas Paul, with whom Madhuri Dixit had made her screen debut.
Mamata, actually, seems to be taking a leaf out of the Left Front’s book. The CPI(M) had gone through a phase when it had fielded veteran actors like Anil Chatterjee and Biplab Chatterjee in Assembly elections. “Mamata is using a Left tool to fight them,” a Trinamool source said. Already, actors Tapas Paul and Satabdi Roy are Trinamool MPs, while, others like Supriya Devi (who acted opposite Uttam Kumar in several films) and Lokesh Ghosh are known Trinamool sympathisers.
But it is mainly stars past their prime in the film world who opt for politics, observes a political analyst. “Politics offers greater mileage than social work, so it’s a better option,” he said.
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