On the eve of her Singur visit, chief minister Mamata Banerjee decided against addressing a rally in the Hooghly block. She has, however, not cancelled her visit. She will chair the scheduled administrative meeting at the (block development officer) BDO office but will not address a rally there. The decision came as surprise because in the last 18 months, whenever the chief minister visited any district she always addressed a rally after the administrative meeting. “I will not address a rally in Singur because the people have just celebrated Jagadhatri Puja and must be tired. I will, however, hold the administrative in the BDO office because I want to send a message to the people of Singur. It was in the same BDO office from where we were driven out in 2006,” Ms Banerjee said.
Political observers say that the reason she gave for not addressing a rally was unconvincing and that the real reason is that she does not want to face any embarrassing situation and uncomfortable questions from the people. “The people of Singur are extremely angry with the Mamata Banerjee government. On Wednesday, newly-appointed junior agriculture minister Becharam Manna had to face public wrath in Singur. People have not taken kindly to the sacking of senior Singur MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya from the agriculture minister’s office. Didi, therefore, does not want to take any chances,” a Trinamul Congress MLA considered close to Ms Banerjee said.
Ms Banerjee, however, refused to accept that Mr Manna was heckled by the people. “There were hundreds of people in the queue who became restless because of the delay in the distribution of rice coupons,” she explained.