KOLKATA: The New Year began with a political ‘bang’ in West Bengal. The arrest of Trinamool Congress (TMC) Lok Sabha members Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Pal for their alleged involvement in the `15,000 crore Rose Valley ponzi scam is being viewed by party supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as revenge for opposing demonetisation.
In retaliation, over 1,500 TMC cadres stone-pelted BJP workers, ransacked BJP offices, blocked borders with Odisha, Jharkhand and Assam and gheraoed houses of BJP MP Babul Supriyo and state BJP chief Dileep Ghosh.
Sceptical about the timing of the arrests, just after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 50-day promise of normalising the crisis caused by the cash ban, Mamata smelt the Centre’s conspiracy. She said the BJP can’t deter her party from taking a stand for the people by doing vendetta politics.
In the national political scenario, the TMC is riding the demonetisation saddle to oppose the BJP. However, it is not averse to the saffron party being its direct adversary in the state too. The aggressive growth of RSS in West Bengal and the steady rise of BJP’s vote share and its success in attracting the young urban Bengali and Hindi-speaking people in the state is not going unnoticed in the TMC camp.
The TMC is threatened by not having a regional ally to fight the demonetisation blues, and its national image is being dented for the cover-up of riots in south Bengal towns in the past three months. The TMC has taken to gheraos, arson and dharnas that Mamata promised to stop after she became CM in 2011.
The BJP is also harping on issues such as immigration from Bangladesh and use of Bengal as a safe haven for cross-border terrorism to become pro-active in the state.
With a weakening Congress and a sinking Left, the BJP is set to see a phenomenal rise in the state. However, TMC’s reaction and BJP’s counter-reaction is likely to spill more blood on the streets of Bengal. In the ever changing political scenario, only one thing doesn’t change—the violent political culture of Bengal.