With too many cooks spoiling her broth, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has decided to scrap her team of advisers comprising the Union Cabinet dropouts whom she had deposited atop her own Cabinet colleagues soon after they became jobless in the wake of her quitting the UPA-II late last year.
According to reports tumbling off the Writers’ Buildings moves were afoot to do away with the “Government approved” Advisers and swap the existing system with “informal advisors.”
A draft circular was ready and it would soon be brought to force after the Chief Minister’s Jangalmahal tour, Government sources said.
The six Advisers (with Ministerial ranks) who were rehabilitated after their loss of job as Union Ministers with plush offices in the State Secretariat were Mukul Roy, Saugato Roy, Sultan Ahmed, Sudip Bandopadhyay, CM Jatua and Sisir Adhikary.
The immediate reason behind the decision to scrap the advisery system was recurrent differences of opinion between the Cabinet Ministers and the Advisors some of whom reportedly tended to take their jobs too seriously undermining the authority of Ministers themselves.
The recent face off between Bengal Industries Minister Partho Chatterjee and his departmental Adviser Saugato Roy is a case in point. Roy a former Union Minister had earlier gone on record saying Bengal was not the place for large-scale industries as there was land constraint. Hence, middle and small-scale units would constitute the right model for the State’s industrial development.
This infuriated Chatterjee. While he resented Roy’s view the latter repeated his statement last week at a Chamber of Commerce meeting batting for middle and small-scale units even as the Industries Minister a close confidant of Banerjee immediately rejected the view saying there was no land constraint in the State.
For the records the Trinamool Congress Government was against acquisition of lands as a matter of policy and advocates direct purchase of plots by the investors from the market.
While Roy’s statement was a source of embarrassment for Chatterjee who had been trying to hard-sell the State’s “conducive to industrial climate” to the investors he said on Sunday “land is not an issue and the problems of those — regarding availability of land — who have already submitted their proposals would soon be sorted out.” He insisted Roy’s statements on land constraints and his views on impossibility of setting up bigger units was “his personal opinion.”
He said, “What anyone thinks is not my issue. My brief is to bring industries in the State and I appeal to anyone who faces difficulties in getting lands for industries to come to me and we will certainly get them land.”
Meanwhile, sources in the Trinamool Congress said the Chief Minister was “unhappy with the role of at least two of these Advisors: Saugato Roy and Sudip Bandopadhyay” and had been keeping them under close watch.
While Roy recently tended to vent his agony telling a public gathering that the show must go on “whether I leave or not” Bandopadhyay was reportedly put on notice by the Chief Minister for spending more time in his constituency rather than in Delhi.