Kolkata: Just four days after saying he would hug Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee if he got Covid-19, it has emerged that BJP national secretary Anupam Hazra has indeed tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
Hazra is now admitted in a private hospital in south Kolkata with mild symptoms, a BJP leader who didn’t wish to be named told ThePrint.
His comments had triggered a backlash from Trinamool Congress leaders, who filed a police complaint against him for maligning a public figure who is a woman, thus allegedly violating the Constitution.
Senior BJP leaders had distanced themselves from Hazra’s comments, and he clarified that his words were meant to make Mamata Banerjee understand the pain of Covid-19 patients and their families.
BJP national vice-president and former Trinamool leader Mukul Roy said of Hazra’s comments: “Important people should think before making random comments.”
The Congress’ leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, had said: “We may have differences with Mamata Banerjee over her politics, but such disgraceful comments made by a former MP against the chief minister and a lady should be condemned by all.”
A senior Trinamool leader said of Hazra: “We have already lodged a complaint against him. Action will be taken. The BJP always gives importance to people like him who have nothing to do with people and politics. These are all opportunist traitors. He thought that he would score some points by making such disgraceful comments about the chief minister. It portrays his character.”
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A controversial figure at Santiniketan
Anupam Hazra was an assistant professor of social work at the Rabindranath Tagore-founded Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, before joining the Trinamool Congress in 2014 and winning the Lok Sabha election from Bolpur (where Visva-Bharati is located).
After being elected MP, he got a year of leave from the university, which expired in June 2015. A senior professor at the university who did not wish to be identified, said Hazra did not join for two years, so the university terminated his service.
Hazra filed a writ petition against his termination before the Calcutta High Court. The UGC and the central government were made parties to the case.
In June 2018, the Calcutta High Court reinstated him, saying: “The university is directed to allow petitioner to resume his service since the only ground of resistance being whether he could be both a Member of Parliament as well as serve in the university has been answered in the fourth report of Joint Committee on Offices of Profit, which was presented to Lok Sabha on 13th August 2015.”
However, his name is nowhere to be found on the list of faculty members on the Visva-Bharati website, because the professor quoted above said the university had moved the division bench of the high court against the order, and the matter is pending. This was confirmed by the university’s officiating registrar Ashok Kumar Mahato.
Hazra’s 2019 election affidavit also said the matter was sub judice. According to the affidavit, he completed his Ph.D. in social work in 2017.
Interestingly, Hazra is one of the few politicians in Bengal who says he’s a ‘crorepati’ — his affidavit shows assets worth Rs 1.34 crore.
Political career
In politics, too, Hazra has attracted controversy. Before his election as MP from Bolpur, he was introduced to the electorate as the nephew of veteran Trinamool leader and Birbhum district chief Anubrata Mondal.
He won the Lok Sabha poll, but fell out of favour with the party leadership, including Mamata Banerjee. He then started talking about corruption in the Birbhum district, and in January 2019, the Trinamool Congress expelled him for “anti-party” activities.
He joined the BJP soon after, and fought the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from southern Kolkata’s Jadavpur seat. But he lost to Trinamool’s actor-politician Mimi Chakraborty by almost three lakh votes.
Since this defeat, Hazra has been largely absent from programmes organised by the state BJP, and a senior leader said on the condition of anonymity that he had been “sidelined”. But then, out of the blue, he was made national secretary of the BJP, which left even local leaders scratching their heads.
“His political career did not show any promise in the last one year, but he got elevated to the position of national secretary. We were surprised to see his name appearing alongside senior leaders like Arvind Menon and Sunil Deodhar. We don’t have an idea how he was chosen by the central leaders. Nobody knows what his contribution to the party is,” the senior leader said.
The leader speculated that Rahul Sinha, the former face of the BJP in Bengal, was dropped to accommodate Hazra’s name as national secretary.
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