Mamata vows to singe Bengal with Singur fire

KOLKATA: Mamata Banerjee is not quick to learn from setbacks. Singur not only failed to stoke anti-CPI(M) fires, but instead dissipated the groundswell of support she began with.

The shifting of the Nano project from Singur has failed to evoke a Nandigram-style retaliation from the CPI(M), earned Mamata no brownie points and brought in only brickbats. But the Bengal tigress is not sitting back, licking her wounds. Not yet. Rather, the Trinamool Congress chief is going full throttle in her attack on the West Bengal government, raising a call to arms on every petty issue.

Mamata’s latest salvo came over the arrest of Trinamool Congress youth leader, Swarup Biswas and 29 of his associates, on charges of provoking rampage in a police station in Kolkata on the eve of the recently concluded Durga Puja. First, Trinamool MLA Partho Chattopadhya threatened city police commissioner, Gautam Mohan Chakrabarty, that the party’s workers would set the entire state ablaze unless Biswas was released.

But it failed to unnerve the commissioner, who recorded the entire conversation on his mobile phone. The Trinamool then organised a rally on Sunday, where Mamata herself threatened to gherao the Kolkata Police headquarters on October 20. She also threatened to gherao Writers’ Buildings, the state secretariat, at a later date after the ongoing festive season.

Describing the commissioner as pawn in the hands of the CPI(M), Mamata said, “When I will enter Writers’ Buildings I will rub his nose on the ground.”

That isn’t all. Mamata is also abusing a large section of the media, especially those newspapers and television channels which had been critical of her during the Singur agitation. Even at Sunday’s rally, she singled out some newspapers and channels and showered abuses on their scribes.

Political analysts feel that Mamata’s recent exhortation to supporters to spread the Singur fire throughout the state stems from her frustration to provoke a full-fledged retaliation either from the CPI(M) or the state government. “It may be a symptom of weak governance or politically motivated administrative patience. But the fact remains that during the last chapter of the Singur issue, both the CPI(M) and the state government have been extremely cautious to avoid any kind of political or administrative retaliation although there were enough provocations for the same. And now that Singur is a lost chapter, with enough brickbats for her, Mamata has started picking up petty issues to provoke retaliation,” a senior political analyst here said.

Surprisingly, there has not been any counter-statement from any Left Front leaders
so far.

r_sumanta@dnaindia.net