The Trinamool Congress is reported to have put a number of senior party leaders on the scanner following reports of their getting dangerously close to an aggressively assertive BJP in Bengal.
Among these leaders are at least three MPs and two powerful Ministers, one hailing from a coastal district of the State, who had played a crucial role in Mamata Banerjee’s land movement in Nandigram, sources say.
In fact this leader played a “role” for the saffron outfit in its good show in a by-election in East Midnapore, the Marxists allege. While the Trinamool won the election, the BJP trounced the left to come second in the polls held early this year.
Already fidgety over a possible “Tejaswi remake” on TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee who is also nephew of the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool leadership has clamped informal ban on State leaders’ visit to Delhi.
Though the TMC dismissed reports that the party’s own ‘Yuvaraj’ had things to hide investigating agencies were reportedly planning to proceed against the Banerjee junior for his alleged links with a builder RK Modi who was under probe for his alleged illegal acts.
Even Union Minister Prakash Javdekar recently demanded an explanation from the Chief Minister or her resignation alleging Abhishek had accepted favours from the realtor when he was the director of a firm leaps and Bounds Pvt ltd. The MP had however resigned from his post before contesting the elections, his party men said.
The unwritten ban came particularly after the Enforcement Directorate gave a clean chit to a senior TMC leader in Narada bribery case saying he was not seen accepting cash from the sting journalist in the video.
The leader, once number two in party hierarchy recently met a very senior Union Minister over morning breakfast, Trinamool sources said grumbling his role in getting the whole bunch of party MlAs in Tripura to don saffron gear ahead of the presidential polls.
Though the leader, considered “Chanakya” in TMC parlance, has not minced words about his being ignored by Mamata Banerjee in recent time his supporters said their leader was still “very much in the Trinamool Congress and is gutsy enough not to quit the party — if need be — secretly.”
Senior leaders of the party like Partho Chatterjee, Subroto Mukherjee simply laughed away suggestions of any secret links between the Trinamool leaders and the BJP.
“The BJP is trying to play the tricks it played in Bihar so that it can topple the Government here. But they must remember that Bihar and Bengal are two different plains. Here communal outfits have no place. The will be rejected by the people in the elections like on earlier occasions” the leaders said.