It is not that Mamata Banerjee did not anticipate dissent while granting tickets to former bureaucrats, bosses of private-sector companies and actors and actresses.
Mamata Banerjee may have done a fine balancing act in including representatives of almost all sections of society among Trinamool candidates for the West Bengal assembly polls, but her impressive list of “talents”, it appears, has failed to impress party cadres and leaders, particularly those denied tickets or sidelined.
It is not that Banerjee did not anticipate dissent while granting tickets to former bureaucrats, bosses of private-sector companies and actors and actresses. While declaring party candidates for 228 seats, and leaving only 64 and two for allies Congress and SUCI, at her south Kolkata residence last Friday she said: “I would request all who did not get tickets to understand compulsions. The party would compensate them in the days to come.”
Banerjee told reporters that her approach was inclusive and she had tried to have variety. To regain her pro-industry image, which was dented after Bengal lost the Tata-Nano project, she has pitted former Ficci secretary general Amit Mitra against state finance minister Asim Dasgupta. Then she chose former chief secretary Manish Gupta to fight chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in Jadavpur.
Another reason for choosing Mitra was to resurrect Bengal’s debt-trapped economy in the event of Trinamool coming to power.
“There isn’t a candidate who can understand economic issues better [than Mitra],” a party leader said.
But the choice of Gupta, film actors Chiranjeet and Debashree Roy, former JP Morgan vice-president Mahua Moitra and the like has angered party men.
“Gupta was the key bureaucrat who set police on Banerjee and got her physically removed from Writers’ Building when Jyoti Basu was the chief minister,” a Trinamool leader said, adding, “Does she think that people do not have any memory?”
These seats should have been given to more respectable and acceptable people, he said.
The choice of former IPS officers Sultan Singh and Rachpal Singh was also similarly questioned. “What were they in the heyday of the Left rule? They acted as party cardres,” Trinamool leaders said.
A senior party leader who was denied ticket said: “While we understand her compulsions, she could have been choosy in giving tickets to some of the actors and controversial former bureaucrats of the Left-ruled Bengal.”
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