There could be more problems for the ruling Trinamool Congress as a senior party leader and a former State Cabinet Minister has started sounding rebellious.
Madan Mitra, once considered the member of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s kitchen cabinet, has vented his ire against some unspecified party colleagues wondering why he was made “the bali ka bakra (scapegoat)” and asking whether it was wrong on his part to work for the Trinamool Congress.
The incident comes against the backdrop of Trinamool Congress legislators switching over to the BJP in hordes.
A video going viral in a social networking site shows Mitra making some crucial questions as to why he could not get parole when he was in jail in the Sharada chit fund case whereas other senior leaders like Sudip Banerjee could get the same.
Similarly, the former State Transport Minister asks how “many leaders like Kakoli Ghoshdastidar, Aparupa Poddar, Subhendu Adhikary” who were accused of same offence could get relief against arrest while he was sent to jail. “Can this be termed as making me a bali ka bakra?” he asks apparently showing his displeasure for his leadership.
The senior TMC leader who very recently contested and lost the Bhatpara Assembly elections to the BJP could not however be contacted.
Meanwhile, the cut-money crises deepened in Bengal with a large number of lower-rung Trinamool Congress leaders being confronted and gheraoed by the people demanding back the bribe money they paid over the years for various Government services.
Tuesday saw common people detaining TMC leaders in villages of Birbhum, Coochbehar, Armbagh, Hooghly and other places demanding their money back. In some places the houses of the TMC panchayat members and councilors were stoned by slogan-shouting crowd forcing the administration to post police pickets in those areas.
Days after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee rebuked party men in a general meeting of TMC councilors for taking “cut money” and directed them to return whatever cash they had extorted from people the crowds seeking back their cut-money continued to swell in the districts and villages.
Incidentally senior State Minister Partho Chatterjee on Friday tended to contradict the Chief Minister claiming 99.99 per cent of his party men were honest and that the BJP was only inciting the people to gherao the TMC representatives in the villages.
People at Khanya village in Birbhum accosted a local TMC leader and got him to own up the responsibility of returning the entire cut money he had taken for helping the people get wages under 100-days’ work scheme.