Under pressure from the Central Bureau of Investigation in Saradha chit fund case, an incensed Mamata Banerjee has started efforts to befriend Hardik Patel, an “enemy’s enemy” in Gujarat, the home State of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Suddenly realising — after CBI operations in Kolkata — that the Patels of Gujarat had reasons to “fight for their right”, the Bengal Chief Minister has got her party Trinamool Congress to invite Akhilesh Katiyar “a known right hand man” of Hardik Patel at Nabanna on November 11 where she is likely to officially back the Patels’ for OBC status, highly informed sources in the Trinamool Government said.
The meeting is scheduled at around 4.30 pm on the appointed day, sources said. “By then the Chief Minister will be back from Delhi and the fate of her meeting “on federalism and other issues” with Prime Minister Modi will be known,” said a senior Trinamool leader and a Minister. Communication confirming appointment from the PMO, however, had not come to the Chief Minister’s office till reports last came in.
State Minister and former CBI joint director Upen Biswas is likely to remain present during her engagement with the Patel leaders in Kolkata, sources said.
The Patel card is being used by Banerjee in an apparent bid to give vent to her anger against the Prime Minister whose office handles the CBI, which has issued summons to party general secretary Sankudeb Panda, an alleged blue-eyed boy of Banerjee. There are other leaders like four MPs, three Ministers and a set of MlAs who are soon going to be called by the CBI whose officers said they “mean business.”
Both Panda and the two Ministers reportedly know a lot about the whole chit fund business. Besides, the Trinamool top rung leadership is also befuddled and annoyed with the CBI decision to take jailed leader Madan Mitra to some other State for interrogation. Mitra has thus far remained tight-lipped.
Banerjee’s decision to use Patel as a tool against the BJP is to gain upper hand in her discussion with the Prime Minister, party sources said. The “BJP Government has suddenly unleashed CBI for political reasons before the next year’s Assembly elections,” complained a veteran party leader and a Minister from South Kolkata conceding also that the “BJP has no way out but to make the CBI act or else they will lose their vote to the left as can be seen from the steady erosion of the party’s support base during the recently concluded civic elections.”
According to sources, Banerjee has confided in her close associates about the “fighting spirit of Hardik Patel” whom she has compared with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. “He clearly looks to have the right qualities in him and is a second Kejriwal” Banerjee is known to have told her confidants before asking them to invite his associates to Kolkata for discussions.