People's Democracy

BENGAL NEWSLETTER

Desperate Trinamul�s Mayhem In The City And Suburbs

B Prasant

THE entire ambience at the Howrah station as I alight from the Steel Express en route from Jhargram on January 2, 2009 (with stops-over for the pre-poll picture obtaining at Para at Purulia and Nandigram � more of which later) is one filled with tension. Six state buses have been put to the torch. Several dozens of motor vehicles including taxis have been stoned and battered, with mangled heaps of metal and plastic lying all around. And then, as a grisly finale, their fuel tanks were blown up.

There is worse of the same in the offing, a shell-shocked station attendant tells me and I follow his quivering, pointing finger to take a look at the rows of TV sets overhead. Each screen is filled with the raucous image of the Trinamuli chieftain and her men � maybe a couple of thousands in all � grimly, menacingly, noisily, and with lighted torches, and more dangerous instruments of violence, make an approach towards the ground-floor two-room flat at the housing estate at Palm Avenue buttressing the beginning of the Ballygunge locality. This is where Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee lives with his wife Meera and daughter Suchetana.

The cause for this completely irresponsible and terribly dangerous provoking manoeuvre, you query. There is no cause as such; I may like to point out. Listen to what the �chief� herself has to shout out. �The state government must allow the [polluting, as per the High Court order] two-stroke engine auto-rickshaws to remain in place, and the government must instead wind up the excise department as it causes pollution.� Clearly, the Trinamul chieftain is indulging in such desperation using any ruse she can find because she is in a bind.

The unprecedented attempted assault on the chief minister�s residence at nine in the evening, and then again at the same time the next day was rebuffed by the local people who chased away the whole lot of Trinamulis, bag and baggage, once and perhaps for all. Nevertheless, the events showed that, as the Lok Sabha elections approach, just how sinister the main opposition outfit can become.

CAUGHT IN

THE ACT

It appears that one senior CBI officer much beloved of the Trinamulis has been caught and quite red-handed and if you pardon the clich�, with a hand in the pot, and the pot comprises large amounts of illegally acquired bundles of currency notes (Rs 13.80 lakh or thereabouts, and counting), around 70 lakhs of rupees worth of savings schemes, ten or so bank accounts, and so many pieces of bejewelled ornaments that the enquiring (CBI) officers are hard put even to count them all (what is this, a fetish for gold?!).

This is the same officer who looked into the Tapasi Malik killing case and was alacritous enough to find quickly the seventy-plus Suhrid Dutta of the CPI(M) guilty enough to be put in long jail custody where the elderly comrade is still incarcerated. This was also the same CBI operative who failed miserably to locate and recover the stolen Nobel medallion of Tagore. Finally, he is the man �on the spot� who looked after the sad instance of suicide of Rizwan-ur Rahaman and nearly made the case into a communal imbroglio. Each of his actions had been lauded by the Trinamuli chief whose penchant for even cases of petty thievery to be �handed over to the CBI� is now seen as concomitant with the cases being handed over to the supervision of this officer whose political options are known and exercised.

Biman later tells the media at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan on January 6 that Mamata Banarjee was indulging in such violent antics primarily to draw popular attention away from the CBI officer�s misdoings, and her frustration at his being caught in the act.

NANDIGRAM,

PARA, SUJAPORE

On the bye-elections held, a fear psychosis was allowed by the Trinamul and the Maoist remnants to spread around Nandigram�s three blocks long before the polls came around. More than a couple-of-thousands of voters were intimidated into not straying out of their hutments come the election day. Several thousand more simply had fled the locales for fear of assault from the Trinamul-controlled Gram Panchayats and Panchayat Samities whose buildings now house hordes of criminals � developmental perspective given new dimensions under Trinamul-run panchayats. The EC has been kept duly notified.

That is all there is to it. Sujapore in Maldah has always been a Congress stronghold. The CPI(M) have never lost the Para seat. What is regrettable is the very communal approach of the Congress leadership at Sujapore, speeches and acts that are on record on TV � regrettable, but given the fight put up by the dour CPI(M) unit of the Maldah district under the state leadership and direction, not quite unexpected of the Congress � which is ever willing to compromise with the forces of religious fundamentalism as the imperatives of time and occasion demand.