West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Monday that the TMC would learn from the few mistakes they have made.
TMC MP Derek O’Brien quoted Didi after meeting her on the occasion of Bengali New Year. “In the last two years, there have been hundreds of examples of development in Bengal. We also may have made two or three mistakes. But we will learn from our mistakes in the New Year,” said O’Brien on behalf of Mamata.
The TMC chief has faced the brunt of several unpopular and autocratic decisions, which have invited widespread criticism from all quarters. The arrest of a professor for circulating an anti-TMC cartoon, branding a farmer as Maoist before arresting him, as well as calling a student a Maoist has left the state government red-faced. The most recent case of embarrassment for the Mamata Banerjee Government was when TMC workers vandalised the historic 100-year-old Baker Laboratory at Presidency University in retaliation of Didi and state Finance Minister Amit Mitra’s heckling by SFI activists in the capital.
The TMC has denied its role in the Presidency incident, even as video footage captured the presence of one of its councillors, Partha Basu along with party flags.
“On behalf of Mamata Banerjee, let me convey that Presidency (University) is a centre for academics and a centre of excellence. And in the last 20 years this has been the direction,” added O’Brien. Students belonging to the University and even the Vice-Chancellor Malabika Sarkar have alleged that the goons attacked and abused the female students. “If there is violence, if there is hooliganism she (Mamata) will not take tolerate it. And even if TMC workers are involved, that does not absolve them from the guilt,” said O’Brien.
Even as West Bengal Governor M K Narayanan, who is also the Chancellor of the University, accepted that he had failed the students, Didi had maintained a stoic silence.
She had been admitted to a private nursing home in Kolkata following the heckling in New Delhi by SFI activists. She was released from the nursing home on Saturday and is likely to resume office later in the week.
Mamata’s comments came in even as TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee threatened at a rally on Sunday “to break the hand” of anyone who tried to harm the TMC chief.