Throwing her weight once again behind arrested former transport minister Madan Mitra, chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday told party leaders and workers to counter what she described as BJP’s act of political vendetta. “I do not believe that Madan has stolen Saradha money,” she was quoted as saying in a meeting with Nadia district leaders which she chaired at her Kalighat residence. Her statement contradicted the perception which had recently emerged that both Ms Banerjee and the ruling Trinamul Congress had distanced themselves from Mr Mitra after the cancellation of his bail in the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam case and his return to the jail exactly a month ago.
A TMC leader, who attended the meeting, later said that she was very upset with the manner in which the CBI had again become proactive. She suspected this had been done at the behest of the Modi government to help the BJP make Saradha scam a poll plank. “Didi asked party workers to create an awareness among the people that the BJP was using the CBI as a political tool against TMC,” a Trinamul Congress leader said. Even when Mr Mitra was arrested in December 2014, Ms Banerjee had come out strongly in his support declaring that he was innocent. On her orders, the Trinamul Congress had even launched prolonged protests against Mr Mitra’s arrest.
For nearly a year, she had not accepted his resignation from the post of transport minister. However, the CBI successfully used this as weapon to prove to the court how influential Mr Mitra was and therefore should not be granted bail. Last month in a desperate attempt to stop his bail from being cancelled, Mr Mitra again sent his resignation to the CM.
Meanwhile, like she had done earlier with leaders of other districts, Ms Banerjee on Saturday directed Nadia leaders to immediately end factional feud and work in close coordination with each other. In 2011 Assembly, the TMC had won 14 of the 17 seats in Nadia. Ms Banerjee told the district leaders that the party lost three seats due to infighting. “Didi told them to unitedly contest 2016 polls and win all 17 seats,” the leader said. Ms Banerjee reprimanded minister Ujjal, district party president Gauri Shankar Dutta and MLA Ramendranath Biswas for both infighting and corruption. The Trinamul supremo also expressed her displeasure with three MLA’s — Nilima Nag of Haringhata, Samir Poddar of Ranaghat Uttar Purba and Abir Ranjan Biswas of Ranaghat Dakshin — for their failure to strengthen the party organisation.
