After political opposition it is the turn of the intelligentsia to cry out against alleged “criminalisation of politics in Bengal and misrule” of Trinamool Congress Government.
A large section of the State civil society that once backed the call of Parivartan (political change) and the protest movement after Nandigram police firing in 2007 on Thursday roared against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s “undemocratic and inadequate response” against the rising crime particularly against women.
Firing the warning shot against the CM, film personalities like Aparna Sen, Kaushik Sen, poets Sunanda Sanyal, Tarun Sanyal, civil rights activist Sujata Bhadra said the “child of change (Parivartan)” herself had changed after tasting power and would face popular ire if she remained uncorrected.”
The intellectuals were rallying at College Square in Kolkata against the Barasat rape-and-murder case and the political administration’s lukewarm response towards the recent spurt in other such cases.
Besides ending on the top of the NCRB table of crime against women for the past two years the State has seen at least half-a-dozen rape-murder cases in the past ten days. And any protest against the police inaction in such cases has immediately been dismissed by the CM as a part of bigger conspiracy hatched by the Marxists, Maoists and the Congress against her Government. The intellectuals led by the likes of Mrinal Sen, Sankha Ghosh are likely to hold a procession against the rising crime against women and poor administrative response on Friday.
“CM Mamata Banerjee has changed after coming to power. She is not the same person that we saw,” Aparna Sen told the rally on Thursday. “We saw her running to the aid of victims of rape political torture as the opposition leader. But after coming to power she is singing a different tune” Sen who had walked in many a anti-CPI(M) protest marches and even favoured Banerjee’s coming to power said.
“Crime against women is going up by the day and the administration is sitting idle. Today we are number one in the list of crime against women,” Kaushik Sen said ruing how the CM was seeing a CPI(M) hand in every protest movement.
Banerjee who had visited Kamduni village in Barasat north of Kolkata a couple of days ago — where a college student was brutally raped and murdered by a group of miscreants — only to face hostile questions from the local villagers had shouted at the protesters saying they were Marxists and Maoist activists.
She even told a public rally the next day that the “CPI(M), Congress, Maoists and ABP (channel) had hatched a conspiracy to kill me.
lambasting the Chief Minister for her “autocratic ways” friend-turned-critic and poet Sunanda Sanyal said “we brought to power a
Chief Minister who was a leader of the masses and stood by the people in distress. But now she has changed completely.”
At another level the Congress also came down heavily on the Chief Minister for allowing terror to take centre stage during her governance.
“The Trinamool Government is indulging in rampant political violence, as can be seen from the panchayat elections. Ten Congress men have been murdered by the Trinamool” PCC president Pradip Bhattacharya said. The State Government was not cooperating with the State Election Commission in holding free and fare rural elections, she alleged.