Most of the 10 celebrities fielded by West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee for the Lok Sabha polls are turning out to be huge liability for the party.
Seven of them are being considered as outsiders by local TMC workers while the sitting MPs are called “nonprogrammer who rarely visited their constituencies” and have become victims of factionalism in the TMC.
Vehicles of many of these celebrities have been attacked and their meetings disrupted with violent clashes between rival factions within the TMC.
In many TMC workers’ meeting in Balurghat Lok Sabha constituency for its nominee dramatist Arpita Ghosh three workers suffered serious injuries and there had been many scuffles in other meetings too. Arpita had been accused of making “insensitive remarks” about rapes in West Bengal by many women rights groups.
TMC workers there felt local party leader Biplab Mitra who “had been with Didi since she announced the formation of the party in 1997” should have been the nominee and resent fielding of an outsider from Kolkata.