Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who is seeking people’s mandate promising to usher in pariborton (change) by bringing to an end the 34-year Left Front rule in West Bengal, perhaps believes in the saying ‘charity begins at home’. How else can she explain the number of changes she has been making in Trinamul Congress’ candidates’ list?
She had announced her candidates on March 18 and, in the past eight days, nearly half a dozen Trinamul Congress nominees have been replaced or dropped. It all started with Tarak Banerjee, the candidate for Entally constituency in the city who openly refused to contest because he was not given the seat he had desired — Jorasanko.
Interestingly, when the sitting MLA from Jorasanko, Dinesh Bajaj, was denied renomination he was told the party needed to field Mr Banerjee from the seat. Mr Bajaj was surprised to find that instead of Mr Banerjee, the party had fielded Shantilal Jain from Jorasanko.
Mr Jain’s nomination also came as a shock to the large Muslim population in the constituency because they knew him as a hard-core RSS leader who had participated in kar seva in Ayodhya.
“When a number of Muslim leaders told Didi that Mr Jain would be a big liability by antagonising the Muslim vote bank, she dropped him on Thursday night like a hot potato,” a close Mamata aide said.
So Ms Banerjee had to replace Mr Banerjee in Entally with Swarna Kamal Saha and Mr Jain in Joras-anko with Ms Smita Bakshi. “Had she accepted Mr Ban-erjee’s request and fielded him from Jorasanko, she would not have to cha-nge any candidate,” he added.
Ms Banerjee faced an even bigger embarrassment when she learnt that Partha Pratim Das, who she had nominated from Khejuri in East Midnapore, was arrested.
Mr Das, who had several cases pending against him, including one murder case, was immediately replaced with Ranjit Mandal.
Mohua Moitra in Jalangi seat in Murshidabad was replaced with Idris Ali because Mr Ali’s original seat, Canning East, was later given to the Congress.