Despite having 46 MPs of Trinamool Congress (TMC) in both the Houses, Mamata Banerjee has been cornered in the national politics. The atmosphere in homeland or outside has become suffocating for her. Perhaps for this reason she has chosen to take a leave, maybe for a short while, to Singapore. On August 17, Banerjee left for Singapore with a big group and with a hope to bring promises to set-up several industrial projects. This reminds us of the foreign tours of former chief minister of West Bengal late Jyoti Basu, who with the same plea used to travel to several foreign countries and ultimately bringing nothing for the State except sweet memories of his foreign tours. We still do not know whether something is going to happen in the case of the film-star-studded team of Mamata’s current visit to Singapore.
| West Bengal? |
She had not expected that BJP would get so many seats in the recent Lok Sabha elections so as to dwarf all other parties. The position in the Lok Sabha is such that the BJP need not bother to put any importance on the dissent voices, if any, of NDA partners. At this juncture, if Mamata wants the friendship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she has to go in for an untiring and continuous effort to please him as she had abused Modi in filthy language and criticised him on so many false counts during the last parliamentary election campaign. But, Modi had dealt with her in a very soft and modest way. So far he has never been discourteous to Mamata.
Modi is pursuing a new policy of sending Central Ministers to West Bengal to sort out different problems faced by the State. So long Central Ministers like Smriti Irani, Dharmendra Pradhan, Piyush Goyal, and Ram Vilas Paswan have already visited the State.
On August 14, it was declared on the floor of the Parliament during the question hour session that Road Transport Minister, Nitin Gadkari will visit West Bengal. The specific dates of his visit were between August 25 and 29. Mamata soon forwarded a letter through her parliamentary party leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay that she wants to visit Delhi between August 23 and 29. During this period, she wants to see the Prime Minister. It seems that it would not happen as Central Minister Gadkari would visit the State during same period. This is the second time that Mamata is going to be disappointed. Earlier, she wrote a letter to the PM with the willingness to see the Prime Minister. But at that time the programme schedule of the Prime Minister to visit Nepal was finalised. Hence, he regretted his inability to see her.
In this process, it has already come to light that PM chalked out this schedule keeping in view the forthcoming elections to Municipalities, Corporations and Assembly. When Central Ministers come to any State on business tour, they talk with bureaucrats and administrative heads. There is little chance to interact even with their own party men let alone interact with any member of the ruling party of the State. But with this new policy Modi government would get two fold advantages—one, Modi government in general and BJP in particular would enjoy a good mileage on this count especially during the forthcoming elections in the State. And two, through this they would be in a position to keep the ruling party under pressure.
New BJP President, Amit Shah is likely to visit Siliguri on September 6, and is likely to visit West Bengal too. BJP workers are very much enthusiastic about it.
—Asim Kumar Mitra from Kolkata
