The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal seems upbeat over the May 10 meeting likely to take place between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Ministe Mamata Banerjee when he visits Bengal.
According to party sources, senior Trinamool leaders, including two key Ministers, want the Chief Minister to strike a “good bargain” with the Prime Minister if he demanded Banerjee’s support for the Central legislations like land, Housing and GST Bills.
“There should be a quid pro quo between the two sides,” a senior leader close to the Chief Minister said, adding the “victimisation of the Trinamool leaders and maligning of the party in the name of CBI probe in chit fund case must stop.”
Banerjee could also want the Central forces to play a lesser role in the next year’s Assembly elections. “Mamata Banerjee has always been in favour of a balanced Centre-State relationship where none should cross each other’s limits. There is an apprehension that the Central forces could be used to rig the Assembly elections against the TMC. The Centre should ensure that State police have a deciding role in the elections and that they are allowed to work in a friendly atmosphere with the Central forces” the leader said.
With a hysterical drop in Banerjee’s popularity graph in the face of chit fund scam, dwindling law and order situation, alleged TMC-criminal nexus, large-scale electoral violence and rigging in the recently concluded civic polls where the ruling party won hands down, there has been a considerable apprehension within the party that it might not even reach three figure mark in the 294-member House should the polls take place the way they happened 2006 onwards.
“It is this arithmetic in the mind that Mamata Banerjee had rushed to see the Prime Minister in March and gave her nod to chit mahal and coal Bills. It is clear from recent developments that the two fascist anti-people parties are coming closer even faster than we expected” Adhir Chowdhury Bengal Pradesh Congress president said.
“They are planning together to gag democracy in Bengal. But, historically speaking this is a land of rebels and people will not tolerate any ploy to scuttle chit fund probe or allow rigging in elections. If the BJP joins cause with the TMC then not only it will allow the State to slip into a civil war-like situation but also that party will vanish from this State,” CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakrabarty said.
The Prime Minister would visit Bengal on May 9 for the first time after winning the 2014 general elections. Apart from his official programmes, he is likely to visit his spiritual Guru Swami Atmasthananji Maharaj, the president of Ramakrishna Mission order.
The duo had known each for several decades when Atmasthananda was in-charge of Rajkot Math. Modi reportedly had then expressed his willingness to join the order when he was told by the monk that he was not destined to be a monk but for some other stately work.
On May 10, he is likely to visit ISRO at Burnpur near Asansol where he would inaugurate the extended ISRO plant with Asia’s biggest blast furnace. As Banerjee is also invited in the same function, there is a high possibility of the two leaders engaging each other in crucial discussions.