In what could be the first real blow to the ruling Trinamool Congress in an election year, veteran leader and party MP Somen Mitra on Saturday made public his plans to quit the ruling outfit.
Mitra who had not been in speaking terms with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for alleged “humiliation I have been facing in the party despite my seniority and age”, said he had decided to quit the party “but before that I will resign as an MP as it is immoral to continue after leaving the party under whose banner I have won the elections.”
He made his observations while inaugurating a Kali Puja organised in North Kolkata by a Congress councillor Santosh Pathak.
“It is difficult to stay back in a place where you get nothing but humiliation and cold shoulder for all that sacrifices you have made” the former PCC president said revealing “I have decided to quit the party but before that it is my moral duty to resign as a Member of Parliament. Only after resigning I will go back to my parent party.”
Curiously it was Mitra and departed Howrah MP Ambika Banerjee who were among the first whistle blowers on the thriving chit fund business with political patronage in Bengal.
In first sight Mitra’s decision may not impact the electoral prospects of a confident Trinamool Congress which had been going great guns — if the recently concluded panchayat and civic elections are any indication — and aims at winning 30-35 seats out of 42.
However he could give the Chief Minister some trying time if his “wide political network good, old relation with leaders of the Congress brotherhood” including the Trinamool and albeit his ability to fan up rebellion is taken into consideration.
His MlA wife Shikha Mitra had already been suspended by the Trinamool leadership for reported anti-party activities. Though the Daimond Harbour MP maintained a misty silence on whether some other Trinamool MPs too were planning to follow in his footsteps, sources close to him said “there are more than half-a-dozen MPs in the party who are feeling suffocated by the wayward and highhanded behaviour of the leadership and could take some timely decision at a later date.”
Mitra a former Pradesh Congress president and AICC member had quit his parent party in 2008-9 to float his Pragatisheel Indira Congress. He later joined the Trinamool to bag a ticket from Diamond harbour south of Kolkata.
Before joining the Trinamool Mitra had been a Congress MlA from Sealdah constituency from 1972 to 2009. He has a good following in the student and labour belt and his adversaries fear his shrewdness and expertise to engineer defection and coups in rival camps.
In fact it was during his tenure as the PCC president that Mamata Banerjee, the then State Youth Congress chief was forced to quit the party and float the new Trinamool Congress outfit in 2008.
According to Congress sources the Trinamool MPs who were in close touch with Mitra were Sucharu Haldar and Tapas Paul from Nadia, Shatabdi Roy from Birbhum, Gobind Nashkar from Bongaon and “another two leaders from south-western Bengal.”
Unlikely to get tickets in the next elections these leaders could switch over to the Congress a PCC leader said. Apart from them suspended Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Kunal Ghosh was also in close contact with Mitra.
