by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Kolkata : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday continued her sit-in protest here over the CBI’s attempt to question the Kolkata Police chief in connection with a ponzi scheme scam, as Samajwadi Party leader Kiranmoy Nanda joined her.
The Trinamool Congress supremo, surrounded by her ministers and top party leaders, stayed up the entire night on a makeshift dais at the city hub Dharamtala area, near the Metro Channel, after starting the demonstration around 9 p.m. on Sunday.
There is a blanket security cover in the area.
“This is a Satyagraha and I’ll continue till the country is saved,” Banerjee told the reporters here.
The Chief Minister said she was getting calls from politicians, including former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, all of whom expressed their support for her action.
Nanda reached the venue in the morning as representative of party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress supporters held protest demonstration and put up rail and road blocks in various parts of the city and districts.
A large number of party activists also arrived at Dharamtala since early in the day to express their solidarity.
In an unprecedented confrontation between the Narendra Modi-led central government and the West Bengal government, Banerjee began the sit-in accusing Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah of attempting a coup to destabilise her state, saying there is a “constitutional break-down”, after an ugly face-off between the CBI and the state police.
The showdown started after the federal probe agency’s officers showed up near the residence of Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, who has been under the scanner in connection with the Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the ponzi scheme scam case.
The events were expected to cast a shadow on the Budget Session of Parliament on Monday with the opposition expected to vociferously raise the issue.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Milinda Ghosh Roy,
Kolkata : Even as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went all out to bring leaders of 23 opposition parties on one stage and launched a stinging attack against the Narendra Modi regime at her ‘United India Rally’, political analysts said it might not be enough to catapult her as the prime face of anti-BJP politics as her party lacks a national presence.
Terming Banerjee “a national leader in her own merit”, political analyst Udayan Bandyopadhyay said the January 19 mega rally might have added more significance to Banerjee’s continuous tirade against the BJP government. But it is too early to predict whether she can emerge as the face of the opposition, with her party’s geographical limitation also being a hindrance.
“At the moment the rally might have added significance to her efforts. But her Trinamool Congress does not have any presence outside West Bengal so practically the party can’t have a lot of impact on national politics. But it is true that the more Lok Sabha seats Trinamool gets, the easier it would become for them to bargain in the post-election scenario,” Bandyopadhyay told IANS.
“She was rail minister under two governments and also a long term MP. She is a national leader in her own merit. But it is too early to say that she would be the face of the opposition. The alliance would need more time to materialise,” he noted.
The analyst claimed most of the opposition leaders attended Banerjee’s rally to fulfil their personal agenda and said Banerjee has to give these personal agendas suitable political articulation to lead them.
“Most of the leaders have come together to protect their self-interests. They want to save their parties from getting marginalised. Leaders like (former prime minister H.D.) Deve Gowda and (Karnataka chief minister H.D.) Kumaraswami of the JD(S) came here so that their government in Karnataka can be saved,” he said.
“If she can give a political articulation to these self-interests, it can be of a different significance but the parties have not reached that point yet. That would be a post-election phenomenon,” said Bandopadhyay, a professor of Political Science in Bangabasi College.
Another political analyst, Anil Kumar Jana, claimed that Banerjee’s effort to lead an anti-BJP front may fail as most leaders have come to the alliance to put pressure on the BJP and might go the other way if they are helped out by the ruling regime.
“Except Mamata Banerjee and the DMK in Tamil Nadu, most of the other leaders are busy bargaining with the BJP to solve their own crisis. The alliance for them is a pressure tactics on the BJP. They are more interested in bargaining with the BJP than forming an opposition front. So the picture of the opposition alliance is still not clear,” Jana told IANS.
“It cannot be said that Mamata successfully projected herself as the face of opposition. The absence of (BSP Chief) Mayawati, who is another prime ministerial aspirant, is also significant in this regard,” he said.
“It is very much possible that the likes of Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party and H.D. Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal-Secular, might backtrack on their anti-BJP stand and even form an alliance with them if the BJP negotiates with them. Banerjee’s anti-BJP rally and her efforts will lose its significance at that point,” Jana said.
However, Banerjee’s party leadership was convinced that she is now the face of the anti-BJP opposition.
“This rally in terms of attendance, duration and number of leaders is a record. She not only provided a common platform to the anti-BJP forces, but her efforts were also roundly appreciated by the leaders present on the dais.
“It’s a big achievement. Not only our party, the entire country now holds her as the prime anti-BJP face,” Trinamool Secretary General and state minister Partha Chatterjee told IANS.
The Bengal BJP leadership, on the other hand, said the people would reject Banerjee.
“She brought all corrupt leaders on one stage. Her party is the pinnacle of corruption in Bengal. It is a meeting of the corrupt, who are talking about destabilising a stable and honest government led by Modi ji. People will not like it. They will reject her,” BJP National Secretary Rahul Sinha said.
State CPI-M legislator Sujan Chakraborty claimed Banerjee’s “utopian dream” of becoming the Prime Minister would remain a dream as she has failed to convince the people about her credibility as an anti-BJP face due to her party’s “constant but secret understanding” with the saffron outfit.
(Milinda Ghosh Roy can be contacted at milinda.r@ians.in))
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Employment, News, Politics
Kolkata : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday accused the BJP-led Central government of deliberately not releasing funds for various Central schemes and said Rs 2,500 crore under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) scheme was due to the state.
Accusing the Centre of a “step-motherly attitude” towards the state, Banerjee claimed that people of rural Bengal are not able to withdraw money under the scheme due to lack of bank branches in certain places.
“Some people did not get the money under the MNREGA scheme because the Centre has not provided the money. It is not their money, it is the money of the common people.
“Around 2,500 crore is due in the state under the MNREGA scheme. We have decided to provide the money from the state fund to save people from their agony,” Banerjee said at an event in South 24 Parganas district’s Sundarban area.
“There are many places in Bengal where people are not getting the money of MNREGA because there are no banks even today after so many years of independence,” she alleged.
Pointing out that both the state and Central governments are elected through a democratic process, the Trinamool Congress supremo said it is the duty of the Centre to help out the states, not to stop their funds or stoke unrest.
Referring to the Gangasagar Mela in West Bengal, a famous Hindu festival where thousands of devotees gather to take a holy dip in the confluence of the Ganges, the Chief Minister said the Centre neither provides any funds nor takes any initiative to improve the facilities there.
“The Centre provides huge funds to the Kumbh Mela but they do not care about the Gangasagar Mela. We do not need their money. Go and see the development done by the state government in that region. All the facilities are now available,” she claimed.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions, Politics
Mamata Banerjee
By Amulya Ganguli,
For a leader who enjoys a huge majority in the state assembly and faces virtually no credible challenge from her opponents, Mamata Banerjee is surprisingly insecure.
Her uncertainty about her political position could be seen in the violence unleashed by her party men during the panchayat elections last summer when 16,000 of the 50,000 seats went uncontested by the opposition parties apparently because the ruling Trinamool Congress activists scared away all her adversaries.
The Supreme Court had expressed shock over the absence – forced or otherwise – of the Trinamool Congress’s opponents in the polls. Now, the Calcutta High Court is considering her trepidations about the proposed Rath Yatras of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While an earlier judgment rejected the state government’s plea for banning the Yatras by saying that a threat of violence as argued by the government has to be “real, not imaginary or a likely possibility”, a subseauent verdict has favoured a closer look at what the intelligence agencies are saying.
There is little doubt, however, that Mamata Banerjee nowadays regards the BJP as a greater political threat than either the Congress, which has 42 seats in the assembly against the Trinamool Congress’s 213 in the 295-member House, or the Left which has 32. The BJP, in contrast, has three.
What is clearly worrying the Chief Minister is the jump in the BJP’s vote share from three per cent in 2013 to 23 per cent in a by-election this year where it secured the second place, relegating the Congress-Left combine to the third place. Moreover, a survey has predicted the BJP’s emergence as the principal opposition party in the state.
Behind the BJP’s rise is the perception that Mamata Banerjee is rather too lenient towards the Muslims as they comprise 28 per cent of the population. In addition, there is the longstanding problem of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, who are called “termites” by BJP president Amit Shah.
The Chief Minister’s fear probably is that the proposed Rath Yatras will raise the issue of the “termites” and call for a headcount of the “ghuspetiyas” (infiltrators) under the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal, similar to the enumeration that has already been carried out In Assam.
Reports suggest that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) foot soldiers are currently active in West Bengal with their propaganda in favour of an NRC on the grounds that if urgent steps are not taken, “then the Bengali Hindus will be aceannihilated”, as an RSS functionary has said.
The state government’s fears about the Rath Yatras are probably based on the fact that the processions taken out by the BJP on the occasion of Navratri with “weapons” in March had led to sporadic communal clashes, although they were not as serious as in neighbouring Bihar.
Although most people in West Bengal will consider Amit Shah’s boast of the BJP winning 22 of the 42 parliamentary seats in the state in 2019 as an instance of hyperbole, Mamata Banerjee cannot afford to take the “threat” lightly, for a rise in the BJP’s number of Lok Sabha seats from the present two with three runners-up will be a blow not only to her political prestige, but also to the state’s self-cultivated Leftist-“progressive” image.
An improved performance by the BJP will also undercut the Trinamool Congress leader’s national ambition as one of the architects of the anti-BJP mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) at the national level and of herself as a possible prime ministerial candidate.
As it is, the violence during the panchayat elections had shown her in poor light. Now, if the BJP Rath Yatras attract sizeable crowds, she will be even more on the defensive.
For a doughty fighter, who had routed the well-trenched Marxists, pushing them into a corner from where they are finding it difficult to emerge, the ascendancy is unthinkable of a north Indian party of vegetarian, cow-worshipping “Hindi-wallahs”, who revere a north Indian god like Ram, as a new member of the Trinamool Congress, who was earlier in the BJP, has said.
Arguably, Mamata Banerjee’s combative instincts are fired up when she has a battle on her hands. But the problem is that her party men are not among the most disciplined. Since many of them have switched to the Trinamool Congress from the Marxist communist party, they have a “history” of being violent.
But it is the BJP which will gain if the party is seen to be specifically targeted. As of now, the judiciary is with her, but she will be on a weak wicket if she tries too deseperately to stop what is undoubtedly the democratic right of an opposition party to take out Yatras. Her desperation can also be construed as a sign of being scared.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Kolkata : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said her government is equally considerate towards all minorities and the state never denies shelter to anyone.
On the issue of migration, she said: “Today is International Migrants Day. It is our humanitarian obligation to give refuge to migrants.
“In Bangla we will take care of anyone who seeks shelter in our state, to the best of our abilities.”
She added that her government does not differentiate between people in their hour of need.
“Today is Minority Rights Day. We are all equal and united. Unity in diversity is our strength,” Banerjee tweeted.
Highlighting her Trinamool Congress’ contribution towards the minorities, she said: “You will be happy to know that in Bangla, we have distributed scholarships to over 1.7 crore minority students, the highest in the country.”
—IANS
