Mamata losing battle of public perception?

Nirendra Dev, SNS, New Delhi, 26 December : If politics is a strange game, stranger is the way public sentiment works.

As the political scenario in West Bengal was dominated by the multi-crore Saradha scam, the arrest of key Trinamul leaders including Mamata Banerjee’s Man Friday, Madan Mitra, and the controversy surrounding the Burdwan blast led to the mas leader Miss Banerjee apearing to be losing her charm by the end of 2014.

A ‘Narendra Modi wave’ provided the BJP, which was in the wilderness in Bengal, some acceptability as it polled nearly 17 per cent votes in the Lok Sabha polls making a quantum leap from a mere 4 per cent in the 2011 assembly elections.

In terms of winning seats, TMC did not do badly. However, the public perception about a political party at times may have nothing to with the record margin of electoral victories or winning a record number of seats.

As the year comes to a close, the controversies and media reports on the Saradha chit fund scam could well turn out to be the unmaking of the Congress and its popular leader Mamata Banerjee, who not long ago thrived with her ‘Ekla Chalo’ slogan.

The arrest of Madan Mitra opened a can of worms. Prior to that the arrest and frequent statements of suspended Trinamul MP, Kunal Ghosh and Srinjay Bose brought in a perceptional turnaround in the public mood.

The outburst by one Saidur Rehman, an alleged Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh operative, that he is well connected to the Trinamul leaders in Bengal is being probed by the National Investigating Agency (NIA).

Many Bengal watchers feel most of the problems and the public perception about TMC are the making of a snobbish leadership and its obstinate nature vis-à-vis the Modi regime in Delhi.

Even till 11 June 2014, when making his maiden Lok Sabha speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to reach out to Mamata by calling her ‘Behen (sister)’ and even applauded her administrative steps to correct the errors of the Left regime. But the TMC stuck to its ground of cold shouldering the BJP and more so the Prime Minister.

Often compromising on the ‘Lakshman rekha’ of decency in public discourse, Mamata called Modi, the ‘Danga guru (a riot expert)’.

Responding to the visit of NSA Ajit Doval to violence-hit Khagragarh areas of Burdwan, the TMC charged him with being an “RSS sympathiser”. Till date, Mamata Banerjee has not formally called on the Prime Minister. Of course there was a very brief exchange of pleasantries at Rashtrapati Bhavan at a dinner in honour of visiting Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid on 19 December.

Earlier that day, when asked whether she would ever call on the Prime Minister, Mamata had retorted, ‘Is your question relevant….”.

The BJP is now trying to capitalise on the situation. “We are here to uproot Trinamul Congress,” BJP president Amit Shah threatened at a well attended rally.

Unfortunately for Miss Banerjee, notwithstanding her harping on secularism, the CPI-M and Congress in Bengal are not showing any inclination to soften their stand against her.

In fact, the Left parties have sought to make a common cause with Congress and even BJP against the TMC in the Saradha scam and urged the Prime Minister to ensure a coordinated probe by several central agencies.

In Parliament, the Trinamul MPs made news more often for wrong reasons.

From black umbrellas to black shawls and earthen pots and red diaries, they protested with practically everything inside and outside Parliament. While there could be a debate on how much political mileage the party got by such protests, often joined by other political parties like RJD and JD(U), in the Lok Sabha Kalyan Banerjee (Serampore MP) was forced to tender “regret” for speaking against PM Modi and Lal Bahadur Shastri. In intra-Trinamul politics, former quiz master Derek O’ Brien’s was riding high sidelining Mamata’s former lieutenants like Dinesh Trivedi. Sources said, many TMC MPs are not happy about the state of affairs.

Prof Sugata Bose, Jadavpur MP, has already made a mild protest saying in the Saradha case, the law should be allowed to take its own course. This was a defiant stance against Mamata Banerjee as she had called the CBI a tool of the PMO and BJP and taken to the streets against Madan Mitra’s arrest.

Things only got murkier as Kunal Ghosh told the court that Mamata herself was the beneficiary of Saradha Media money.

While the BJP has called for her resignation, many others said Miss Banerjee and her party cannot run away from their past.