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All in a day — Trinamool mayor close to Mukul Roy resigns, 14 Bengali actors join BJP

BJP adds 'star power' to counter Trinamool's. Bidhannagar mayor Sabyasachi Dutta hasn't quit TMC yet but his defection a matter of time, say insiders

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Kolkata: After Nusrat Jahan and Mimi Chakraborty of the Trinamool Congress, both established faces in the Bengali film industry who won the Lok Sabha elections from West Bengal, took social media and political circles by storm, the Bengal BJP had been working hard to add some “star power” to its camp. The efforts bore some fruits on Thursday when 14 actors joined the party in New Delhi.

The new members include Parno Mitra, Rishi Kaushik, Kanchana Moitra, Rupanjana Mitra, Biswajit Ganguly, Deb Ranjan Nag, Arindam Halder, Moumita Gupta, Anindya Banerjee, Sourav Chakravorty, Rupa Bhattacharya, Anjana Basu and Kaushik Chakraborty.

The move is being seen as a step to get dominance in Tollywood, as the Bengali film industry in popularly known, as also the Bengali television world. While Parno Mitra is a film actor, most of the others are known faces appearing in daily soaps.

Over the past eight years, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool has maintained a stronghold in the film industry. Besides Nusrat and Mimi, TMC has two more “star” MPs — Dev and Satabdi Roy, who is a three-term legislator from Birbhum.

Banerjee has always made sure that all her important public programmes get a good representation of celebrities. The BJP is trying to walk the same path as it continues its efforts to get an edge over TMC in every field.

Trinamool mayor resigns, expected to join BJP

Thursday saw much action in Kolkata too as Bidhannagar mayor Sabyasachi Dutta of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) quit his post, setting off speculation that the BJP may have scored another high-level defection against Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal.

The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation oversees the satellite township of Salt Lake near Kolkata. Dutta is known to be close to TMC defector Mukul Roy, who is now in the BJP, and his resignation comes amid a highly-charged battle between the BJP and the TMC over the control of civic bodies, driven by a flood of defections and reverse-defections. 

According to a senior BJP leader, Dutta, an MLA, can turn out to be another trump card for the party as it attempts to strengthen its presence in West Bengal. Dutta is yet to join the BJP, though party insiders claimed it was just a matter of time before he did.

Control over civic bodies

Control over civic bodies is a key strategy for the BJP ahead of next year’s elections to the state’s 126 urban local bodies, as it can help the party strike grassroots connect and maintain its momentum ahead of the 2021 assembly polls. 

The tug of war over these bodies has now lasted over a month and a half. The Trinamool Congress first lost control of at least seven municipalities, six in North 24 Parganas and one in Darjeeling district, but said last week that it had reclaimed three. 

BJP leaders say at least seven more urban local bodies are expected to come under their control in the coming days. 

“The urban bodies entering the BJP’s fold means Mamata Banerjee is slowly and systematically losing control on her ground level foot-soldiers,” a senior BJP leader said. 

Tug of war

Dutta, a two-term MLA of the Rajarhat-Newtown assembly constituency, is believed to have considerable following in the area.

While putting in his papers, Dutta accused the state’s TMC administration of “non-cooperation”, and alleged that it was not taking any action to stop illegal construction, which he said could lead to a loss of lives in the coming days. 

In his two-page resignation letter, Dutta also accused the Mamata Banerjee government of “intimidating, threatening and coercing” his colleagues to get control of the corporation, which comprises 41 wards. 

In the days preceding his resignation, the TMC was reportedly miffed with Dutta as photographs and videos of his meetings with Roy were aired on TV and social media. 

When Firhad Hakim, the state’s Urban Development Minister and Kolkata mayor, asked him to tender his resignation, Dutta dug his heels in, a senior TMC leader told ThePrint. 

The stalemate reached the Calcutta High Court, which quashed a notice for a meeting of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation to remove Dutta as mayor.

The fight over another municipality — Bongaon — in North 24 Parganas also reached court in the meantime. However, following reports of sporadic violence in the area and confusion over a trust vote, the TMC said it was still in control of the urban local body.


Also read: 10 protests a day and counting – Mamata’s cut-money ‘clean-up’ is scorching TMC


 

 

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