The Bengal Congress is vertically divided over veteran party leader Pradip Bhattacharya’s remarks that expelling the then State Youth Congress president and present Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from the party was a big blunder for which the party was still suffering. While senior party leader and former State president Adhir Chowdhury refused comment on

Banerjee’s expulsion saying it Bhattacharya would be the best person to explain his own views, another senior leader close to present State president Subhankar Sarkar however conceded that Bhattacharya was “two hundred percent correct in his reading of the circumstances.”

But a third Congress leader a former minister linked Bhattacharya’s statements with his “itch to get a Rajya Sabha nominatio which in any case he won’t because Mamata Banerjee needs boot lickers and not politicians.” Bhattacharya a former Rajya Sabha MP who is known for his good chemistry with the Chief Minister earlier said that “Mamata Banerjee’s expulsion from the party was a big mistake the after effects which is still being felt the Congress is still paying for its mistake.”

Banerjee was expelled from the party in January 1997 when AICC leader Somen Mitra was the party’s State president. “He was expelled during the time of Sitaram Kesari … he was the national president … I still remember the day when Somen Mitra called me and told me that Kesari was asking him to expel Mamata, Bhattacharya said quoting Mitra who informed Bhattacharya that he was under intense pressure from the central leadership. “Keshari told Somen Mitra that she should be expelled” because Delhi had already done that, Bhattacharya said adding how he had advised the Pradesh Congress president to desist from expelling her. “I told him not to do it … ‘whatever you do but don’t do it’ … I had told Somen Mitra … but finally she was expelled and the party is still paying the price of that step,” it should not have taken because Banerjee raised a new outfit on January 1, 1998 and rest was history.

“It is for everyone to see how the Congress has a sharp decline in Bengal since that time,” Bhattacharya said.