At a time when the Trinamool Congress is suffering on organisational front causing great stress on party supremo Mamata Banerjee who is torn between organisational obligations and Chief Ministerial engagements as never before, pro-Mamata intellectuals and on Friday called upon the people to boycott BJP and RSS and stand united against their “divisive politics.”.
With seasoned Trinamool organisers getting sucked in to the Narada pay-off case and currently gearing up with their bank and other expenditure details to face the CBI and Enforcement Directorate which has DA case against them the TMC organisation is suffering no end insiders say.
The diminishing attendance of key players from “field work” is affecting the confidence of the lesser leaders some of whom have already started giving “missed calls” to State BJP headquarters which became evident from a BJP leader who claimed to have received “courtesy telephone calls” from a dozen of Trinamool MlAs.
The prominent Trinamool leaders expecting summons from the ED-CBI as early as coming week are Sougato Roy, Sultan Ahmed, Mukul Roy, Aparupa Poddar, Prasun Banerjee, Kakoli Ghoshdastidar all MPs and Suvendu Adhikary, Sovan Chatterjee, Subroto Mukherjee, Firhad Hakim, Madan Mitra, Iqbal Ahmed --- Ministers and MlAs.
These leaders were seen in a sting operation accepting wads of currency notes from a journalist who posed as a prospective investor.
“Our leaders are more busy visiting lawyers and chartered accountants so how can they devote time on organisational works,” said a district Trinamool leader from South 24 Parganas adding “though we have not faced any organizational problem now we may face it in near future, ahead of the panchayat elections as there will be dearth of funds if our senior leaders are taking into custody.”
Another leader from Howrah South Kolkata said how many Trinamool leaders were avoiding party meetings as “they apprehend dramatic action by the CBI and ED in the coming months. They want to steer clear of controversy and may even veer towards the BJP by early next year.”
If things continue as they have been in the past couple of weeks then there could be damaging erosion in the Trinamool’s rural base, particularly in North and South 24 Parganas, East Midnapore, Howrah, Malda and Murshidabad.
This leader who is close to Firhad Hakim, however, said “the BJP will not be able to gain much mileage as people will turn hostile against them if they arrest Bobby da (Firhad).” He, however, said lawyers were being consulted on behalf of the Minister.
Meanwhile, in a new development, Subodh Sarkar a traditional leftist intellectual, who switched sides to become a pet poet of Mamata Banerjee after 2011 Assembly elections appealed to the people to “completely boycott BJP and RSS because “they are divisive forces and have no place in the land of Tagore, Nazrul and Swami Vivekananda.”
launching a scathing attack on the BJP and RSS for taking out armed rallies he said “never before I saw such rallies with arms in Bengal during Ram Navami day. This culture does not go with Bengal.”
Warning that communalism never distinguished between Hindus and Muslims he said it was the duty of the people to rise up to the occasion and reject an “alien culture that divides people and does not unite them.”
State IT Minister and dramatist Bratya Basu accused the BJP and RSS of “harassing the secular opposition apart from dividing the society.”
Among others who were present in the meeting of TMC intellectuals were Indranil Sen, Abhiroop Sarkar, Aribndam Sil and others.