“I have no friends, he said. And if I do have any left, it won’t be for long… That was how the General learned what the whole city already knew: not one but several assassination plots against him were brewing…”
The General here is Simon Bolivar, the protagonist in Gabriel García Márquez’s The General in His Labyrinth — a book based on the final days of the man known as the liberator of many South American nations. The similarities related to the circumstances that both the General, who was talking to one of his acquaintances about people laughing in the courtyard, and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee faced are unmissable.
Hours after Banerjee held a press conference lodging her protest against the raids at her colleagues’ residence on Thursday, another of her trusted lieutenants — Jyotipriya Mallick aka Balu — was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the wee hours of Friday in connection with an alleged ration scam.
Since 2015, Didi has been seeing her pillars, who always stayed around her, crumbling one after the other. Over the past eight years, at least 11 of her trusted lieutenants belonging to her inner coterie, including cabinet ministers, MPs, MLAs and organisational veterans, have been arrested in various corruption cases by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and ED.
The ‘brokens’
Some of them like Sudip Banerjee, an MP; Madan Mitra, former minister; and minister-mayor Firhad Hakim are out on bail, but ‘broken’. Others like Subrata Mukherjee, her oldest colleague and mentor, and Sultan Ahmed, a former MP, died during the investigation process. Didi blames their death on the central agency and the investigation.
“If they (ED and CBI) raid all the ministers, who is going to be left in the government? They are playing a dirty game,” she said while addressing the media on Thursday. Banerjee has multiple times called such actions as ‘political vendetta’ and an ‘intimidation tactic’ to ‘silence’ her.
Her ‘Generals’ like Anubrata Mondal and Jyotipriya Mallick — who used to manage regions, mobilise cadres, and take care of the party funds — are now behind bars. Mondal held sway over the western region which includes Birbhum, Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. Mallick managed the largest district of Bengal (by size) — North 24 Parganas — for the party. The district has five Lok Sabha constituencies. Mondal, meanwhile, used to manage at least six Lok Sabha constituencies.
Partha Chatterjee, Didi’s another old associate who has been with her since the inception of Trinamool Congress, is in jail for almost a year now. While many of her close aides were arrested, some like her party’s former general secretary Mukul Roy and Suvendu Adhikari defected to BJP pre- and post-2019 general elections.
“Didi is standing like a lone fighter and we know that she will never bow down. Many of her trusted generals haven fallen, some of them are back to her, but broken. But she is our superpower,” said a senior Trinamool leader, explaining her lonely fight.
The Seven Scams
The state government and the ruling Trinamool Congress are now battling the central probe into seven scams beginning 2015 that rocked Bengal. The central agencies — ED and CBI — are currently investigating the Sarada-Rose Valley Ponzi scheme, popularly known as ‘chit’ fund scam, graft scam (known as Narada sting operation), recruitment scam, ration scam, coal and cattle smuggling scam.
Apart from the arrested politicians, Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek, who is also the general secretary of the party and an MP, is being probed along with other senior leaders. Over a dozen MPs (former and current), several ministers and senior leaders were grilled, raided and probed in connection with the above mentioned corruption cases.
Even though ED and CBI actions are now being witnessed in opposition states, including Delhi, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu, it is needless to say that Bengal tops the chart of fallen politicians going by the number of cases and arrests. Apart from Trinamool Congress, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is another opposition politician who has seen arrests of his multiple senior cabinet colleagues and MP.
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