Farmers Movement Archive

West Bengal: TMC fills up vacancies in national working committee

KOLKATA: In a clear indication that it is moving beyond the Mukul Roy-Sovan Chatterjee-Suvendu Adhikari phase, Trinamool Congress on Friday replaced their seats in the 21-member national working committee with Chandrima Bhattacharya, Moloy Ghatak and Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who presided over the meeting at her Kalighat residence, also urged leaders to “ignore the defections” and focus on the government’s development agenda. Stepping out of the meeting, party MP Saugata Roy said: “This was a formal working committee meeting. We passed condolences on four party leaders whom we lost. Mukul, Sovan and Suvendu, who had left, were replaced by Chandrima, Moloy and Sobhandeb. We had lost our party treasurer, Tamonash Ghosh, to Covid. Subhasish Chakraborty will be our new treasurer. We adopted a resolution demanding withdrawal of three farm bills. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will go to Nandigram on January 18 and will leave for Purulia the next day.” The rest were all internal party matters, he added. MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar refused to comment, “It was an internal meeting,” she said. State minister Subrata Mukherjee said, “Nothing to say. This was a party meeting.” According to insiders, party leaders, including the CM, felt the need to take development projects to the people. The leaders also mentioned how ‘Duare Sarkar’ and ‘Parae Samadhan’ were evoking tremendous goodwill. The CM, sources said, also advised leaders to “ignore” the constant narrative “of possible defections and discontentment” in party ranks and reach out to people with “government projects”. A senior leader, however, rubbished suggestions that TMC had a preliminary talk on possible candidates for 2021 polls. Roy, asked if any election strategy or CM’s poll-campaign schedule was discussed, said: “It is too early. The CM will go to Nandigram and Purulia.” Party secretary-general Partha Chatterjee told reporters earlier in the day, “Opposition parties have no agenda. They are here to simply disrupt the development happening across the state. Those who are defecting have no agenda.” Chatterjee, in an attempt to offset BJP’s ‘Sonar Bangla’ claims, added: “The people of Bengal will stand by Mamata Banerjee to further strengthen the promise we have made to establish Bengal on the global stage, to build our Biswa Bangla.”

The Times of India

2021-01-09

Kolkata