Mamata Banerjee: The Better For Wear

Trinamool, stung by scandal, has bungled on most poll promises. Yet, on the eve of polls, Mamata is the favorite. How does she do it?

- Dola Mitra

Stings and scams are passe by now on Bengal’s roiling political stage, but can an accident ask hard questions of a regime confident it will win a second term? It might be wishful thinking to see part of the under-construction fly over that collapsed in Calcutta’s Girish Park area as a metaphor for the Trinamool Congress’s fortunes in the assembly polls, but the tragedy offered the trifecta of CPI(M), Congress and BJP another chance of a lunge at tMC. not that it caused even a wrinkle on chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s natural, confident pugnacity: she rushed back from outside Calcutta to manage the defence and promise punishment for the errant firm and compensation for the 21 dead (till going to press) and many injured.

‘Stings’, of course, have flavoured this ele­ction season. So much so that two constables of the special branch of Calcutta Police are accused of snooping on politicians and even trying to bribe a BJP leader for helping them smuggle cattle to Bangladesh. While Calcutta police commissioner Rajeev Kumar promptly suspended the two men and the police sought to explain that the accused had approached the BJP’s former state chief Rahul Sinha in their ‘personal’ capacity, both the BJP and the Congress sought Kumar’s removal. They complained to the Election Commission that Kumar took his orders from the ruling party. There is, however, little evidence to suggest that stings and scams make much difference to electoral fortunes in Bengal.