Mamata Banerjee’s forest and environment minister Jyoti Priya Mallick is the thirteenth top brass of the Trinamool Congress to be arrested in the last 12 years. He was arrested last week by the Enforcement Directorate for an alleged ration scam that took place when he was food minister from 2011 to 2021.
Trinamool Congress may quibble with my count. One leader was arrested twice in two different cases, three arrested leaders have since left the party, two have died. Not just these 13 elected representatives, but many other key party leaders have been arrested, they might say. So unlucky 13 is long past.
Be that as it may, none of the arrests have shaken Mamata Banerjee’s stiff upper lip as hard as Jyoti Priya’s, someone she fondly calls Balu. A loyal foot soldier since they were in the Congress, he has delivered the state’s most populous district, North 24 Parganas, with 33 Assembly and 5 Lok Sabha seats, to the TMC without fail over the last decade.
She was so distressed when his houses were raided by ED on 26 October and his arrest seemed imminent, that she broke her convalescence from a knee-related infection to address a press meet at her home and warned the ED and BJP that if anything happened to Balu, who she said was in poor health, then the TMC would file FIRs against them.
In an angry press meet this Tuesday, immediately after she returned to office after Durga Puja, she metaphorically crowned Mallick the MS Swaminathan of Bengal for engineering a green revolution with his programme of paddy procurement.
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Mounting stress
But you can tell the stress is getting to her. While defending her longish physical absence from office—she did not come to the state secretariat from 11 September to 31 October due to her visit to Spain, a knee problem and the Durga Puja break—she made a rare faux pas. She let slip that “wrong treatment” by doctors of the premier state government hospital in Kolkata, the SSKM, had caused such a severe infection in her knee, that she was forced to stay in bed for seven whole days.
The Opposition did not let it pass. Mamata Banerjee is not just the chief minister but also the health minister of the state, and she had just exposed the state of health care in West Bengal, they said. If she got “wrong treatment” at the hands of her own government’s doctors, imagine, they said, the plight of the ordinary folk.
Add to all of this Mahua Moitra’s plight with the khichri of Henry, Dehadrai, Hiranandani. The TMC has been forced to adopt a ‘mum-is-the-word’ policy.
Then came the Singur order. An arbitration tribunal awarded Tata Motors Rs 766 crore recoverable from the state government for the losses in incurred in the stalled manufacturing plant. 15 years ago, TMC came to power with its protest against the plant.
Even cricket decided to rain on TMC’s parade. Mamata Banerjee called a mega meeting at Netaji Indoor Stadium on 16 November but had to change the date to 23rd because right next to her venue, Eden Gardens is hosting the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup semi-final on that day and the convenience of cricket fans took precedence.
All of which begs the question: Is TMC suffering from the curse of Murphy’s Law which says when the jinx is upon you, everything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong?
Proverbially, there is always light at the end of the tunnel. Political analysts suspect that the BJP, the CPI (M) and the Congress may cry themselves hoarse but TMC has unwittingly got itself a ‘brahmastra’: The TINATT factor—There Is No Alternative To Trinamool. It should ensure no tectonic shift in political preference like the one West Bengal saw in 2011 when the 34-year-old Left Front was ejected from power.
So, for now, TMC can hope and pray this too shall pass and take comfort from the adage, ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger’.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)