Apprehending that a bevy of her party leaders including Ministers, MPs and MlAs could switch sides to BJP sooner than later, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has decided to hold a core committee meeting on January 31 at her Kalighat residence to take stock of situations, Trinamool Congress sources said.
Banerjee’s anxiety stemmed from the fact that a sizeable number of her MlAs, MPs and Ministers had shown some kind of saffron tilt in the recent weeks apart from the State BJP leadership’s foretelling that the Chief Minister was sitting on a virtual powder keg as a good number of Trinamool leaders had decided to switch sides.
Among the leaders who were reportedly in touch with the BJP were Ministers Rachpal Singh, Sultan Singh, Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury, Sadhan Pandey and Manish Gupta.
The MPs who were being watched out were Rajya Sabha Member Debabrata Banerjee and lok Sabha Members Subhendu Adhikary, Sisir Adhikary, Anupam Hazra and Dinesh Trivedi. MlAs who had already revolted against the party and had dared the top leadership to expel them were Sabyasachi Dutta of Rajarhat near Kolkata and SK Ghosh of politically volatile Birbhum where already a good number of Trinamool men had joined the BJP.
While Dutta recently commented on CBI’s action in Saradha saying “there must be fire where there is smoke” embarrassing the party Ghosh reportedly wrote a letter to party president Mamata Banerjee seeking immediate action against corruption criminalization of the Trinamool Congress failing which he even threatened to move the High Court.
“I am not afraid of being expelled. In fact I want the party to expel me if I have said anything wrong,” Ghosh a strong baiter of Birbhum party strongman Anubrata Mandal said.
A statement from the BJP’s top State leadership seemed to have unnerved the Trinamool leadership further. Mamata Banerjee has seriously taken BJP State president Rahul Sinha’s statement that the Trinamool was sitting on a powder keg.
According to reports, a number of Trinamool leaders who were likely switch sides would now join the saffron outfit anytime after February 15. By then the Bongaon parliamentary by-elections would be over.
“Some key decisions will be taken by the party disciplinary committee on certain rotten fruits,” Trinamool general secretary Partho Chatterejee said. Meanwhile, Rahul Sinha on Tuesday launched a scathing attack on Banerjee for not clearing the pending DA of the State Government employees.
“like all other fields Bengal remains a laggard on the issue of clearing pending DA of Government employees,” Sinha said wondering how a so-called poor Government could provide money to the “club employees” without clearing the DA of the Government servants. Recently in an apparent political ploy the Chief Minister had sanctioned a grant of Rs105 crore for 3,500 Bengal clubs for the well being of the youth.