NEW DELHI: That the TMC-Congress coalition government in West Bengal would be a rocky one, no one had any doubts. But, no one really expected the cracks to appear so early on, just two months down the line, that too on issues relating to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee.
A first-time MLA, Abhijit was straightaway made the chairman of the West Bengal Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (WBIDFC) through an executive order of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Banerjee, obviously, wanted to score brownie points with the FM through this act of benevolence, but the West Bengal Congress unit wasn’t pleased.
As a result, Abhijit had to resign from the position to which he was appointed on June 24. According to sources, Abhijit was asked to put in his papers. This was after some protests were lodged with the Congress high command and 10 Janpath intervened to calm tempers.
The Congress West Bengal unit chief Pradip Bhattacharjee, it seems, shot off a letter to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, asking her not to appoint Congress members to any position without consultation with the party bosses. When this ‘surprising development’ was brought to the FM’s notice, sources said, he asked his son Abhijit ‘to resign’.
Confirming the resignation, Abhijit said,”I’m a disciplined soldier of the Congress party and will not comment on the matter. I have informed the party high command of my decision”. What he did not say was that infighting within the Congress led by the anti-Pranab Mukherjee faction was responsible for triggering this crisis.
A senior executive of SAIL, Abhijit, left his job to contest the elections and won with a handsome margin from the family bastion of Nalhati. The WBIDFC chairman post is a lucrative one and veterans in the Congress did not quite appreciate Abhijit walking off with the prize while ‘senior and experienced MLAs were ignored’.
Asked about his resignation, West Bengal AICC in-charge, Shakeel Ahmed, played safe: “I’m not aware, you have to ask him”.
However, Ahmed did not quite hide the fact that all was not well with the TMC-Congress alliance.
That the TMC chief never invited ally Congress for the victory rally at Kolkata is just a manifestation of the strained relations. Sources in the grand old party claimed that in the rural belt it’s worse, it is ‘an all-out-war’,
“Congress workers are being regularly beaten up by the Trinamool goondas, even our party properties are being ransacked and confiscated. This, they say, is a friendly alliance”.