Home Minister Shushilkumar Shinde tried to apply some balm into the wounds of Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee more than a week after her Finance Minister Amit Mitra and she received a “hurt” while trying to negotiate their way through a hostile Student Federation of India demonstration at the gates of Planning Commission in Delhi.
The Union Minister said a probe had been ordered by him into the “unfortunate” incident. “I have instituted an inquiry into the unfortunate incident and a special secretary is looking into it,” Shinde said soon after emerging from a meeting with the Chief Minister.
Both the leaders were present in 20th Eastern Zonal Council meeting in Kolkata.
While the Home Minister’s brief remark tended to throw some light on how things were shaping up between the Congress and its former ally Trinamool Congress.
Thanking the Chief Minister for attending the meeting despite her illness he said, “I am grateful to Mamataji because she has attended the meeting despite her illness.” The Home Minister said Banerjee had discussed her State’s problem with her. “She has put forth her State’s problems well,” he said, adding the problems of all other States like Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar were discussed.
While there was no formal reaction from the Trinamool on Shinde’s statement, many in the ruling party said that they were “not inspired” by the Home Minister’s assertions. Party sources also said that a demonstration led by East Midnapore MP Subhendu Adhikary would be staged in Kolkata against the alleged attack on Banerjee and the Delhi Government’s inaction.
Concurrently a team of Bengal Ministers would visit the Capital to put pressure on the Delhi Government to take action in the April 9 incident where camera footages clearly showed how demonstrators were heckling Amit Mitra.
A senior Trinamool leader and Bengal Minister also said that had the Centre been sincere about taking action then, there would have been some arrests in the Delhi incident “but to our dismay there has been no arrest even eight days after the attack.”
Significantly Shinde’s information on “too little and too late an action” came on a day when Pradesh Congress leaders launched a scathing attack on the Trinamool for giving Bengal an “utterly lawless regime.”
PCC chief Pradip Bhattacharya said, “The Congress had brought Trinamool to power with a hope that we would be delivered from the left misrule but it seems that things are deteriorating by the day.”
Repeating an allegation leveled by the CPI(M) leadership he said, “Everyday Opposition workers and their party offices and houses are being attacked by the Trinamool cadre. The State has slipped into the grip of complete law and order failure”, and added the Congress would organise a civil disobedience on April 23.
Meanwhile SFI leadership on Wednesday extended an unqualified apology on the Amit Mitra episode and promised not to repeat the offence again.
In what seemed to be the product of an intense pressure from the CPI(M) State leadership, SFI all India general secretary Ritabrata Banerjee who was seen sloganeering during the April 9 incident said, “I offer my unqualified apology for what had happened on April 9 and promise that similar incident would not be repeated again.”
He was speaking at the mass remembrance function of Sudipto Gupta, the SFI leader who died in police custody in Kolkata on April 3. The incident had triggered massive protests and generated a public opinion giving the left Front a political advantage which was soon lost out on April 9, experts said.