Concerned at the rising vote percentage of the BJP, which was fast coming up as a challenger in Bengal and acting on inside reports that a number of senior leaders were in constant touch with the saffron outfit, Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee on Friday affected a major change in her party’s district and State committees.
After a lengthy organisational meeting at the Netaji Indoor Stadium the Chief Minister who had a few days ago effected a rejig in her Ministry divested a few leaders and appointed some others apparentlyto tone up the party organisational network, insiders said.The most important among those who lost a post was party Youth wing president and Tamluk MP Subhendu Adhikary who has been her Nandigram spearhead. His father and former Union Minister Sisir Aadhikary has however been retained as the East Midnapore president though an acting president has been appointed to “assist” him in his works.
State Minister Savitra Mitra also lost her job as the Malda district party president “for helping the BJP” while Irish Ali MP from Basirhat was replaced as the party Minority Cell chief by Haji Nurul Islam. Similarly the party labour arm INTTUC would now on be looked after not only by Dola Sen who lost at Asansol to Babul Supriyo but also veteran leaders Subroto Mukherjee and Sobhandeb Chatterjee.
Banerjee’s “nervous reaction” despite her party’s all-time best performance in parliamentary elections winning 34 seats comes amid reports that a number of senior leaders were in touch with the BJP and also the Congress sources said.
Sources also said that Banerjee was aware of the way her party won in the elections.“The party is aware of the fact that in many hundreds of booths the opposition got between 1 and 10 votes while the Trinamool polled 800-1000 votes,” a State leader and a Minister in the know of things said adding the Chief Minister wanted a thorough repair at the orgnisational levels “so that we do not have to depend upon a friendly Election Commission every time.”
The leader also quoted an inside report saying the Trinamool had lost a good 5-6 percent vote to the BJP and had it not been for some one-sided polling thanks to rampant booth capturing the result would have been different as “the left would have then got 5-6 percent votes more.”
