Takes two to tango, Mamata

Prashun Bhaumik |

By Sanjeev Acharya

Mamatadidi has never been an easy woman to live with, politically of course. Old man Atal Bihari Vajpayee will bail us out on that. And now that she is holding hands with the Congress, she has no qualms about squeezing it once in a while. Even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was busy preparing his 100-day report card for all ministers, the Union Minister for Railways Mamata Banerjee was busy raising the cry of revolt over the election of a Congress Mayor in North Bengal’s dusty town of Siliguri.

Threatening a Lanka-kand (the burning of Lanka in epic Ramayana), she accused the Congress and now her ally of having joined hands with her arch rival the Marxists to undermine her party’s candidate for the Mayor’s post. She even called the Congress Party enemy number two after the CPI(M), who she hopes to topple in West Bengal.

Well that was only the first salvo. Now maverick Mamata has gone and unilaterally announced her candidate for the by-poll in Malda, for long a Congress bastion in red Bengal. She has declared Mozahar Hossain as the Trinamool candidate for the Sujapur seat in Malda. Her decision has no doubt annoyed the Congress, as the seat was won by Mausam Benazir Noor of the Congress in the 2007 by-elections. Mausam Noor has been elected to Parliament and thus resigned the Assembly seat.

Mausam’s uncle Abdul Ghani Khan Chowdhury was the undisputed leader of Malda until his death and now his brotherAbu Naser Khan Chowdhury rightly stakes a claim to the Sujapur seat on a Congress ticket. Mamata did not even bother to discuss the issue with the Congress and has in fact started campaigning for Hossain.

But the Congress is still holding back its hand. “Our goal is 2011. Till then we have to keep our alliance going or else we may never topple the Left,” laments a Bengal Congress leader.

Mamata as Union minister is another story. She has trained her guns on Basudev Acharya, chairperson of the railways parliamentary committee and a Left leader. Her attack on her predecessor Lalu Prasad Yadav soon after assuming office was in fact directed at Acharya. Now she has directed the Railway Board to comb all Acharya’s decision to catch him on the wrong foot.

And then there is the land acquisition bill she is opposing, keeping her constituency in mind. But the Congress is keen to go ahead and the bill has been cleared by the Cabinet and awaits Parliament’s approval. But will didi acquiesce. She is not known to.