Trinamul leaders hit the ground on Saturday as advised by Mamata Banerjee to rejuvenate the party in the face of a BJP onslaught but at least one minister ran into a crowd chanting “Jai Shri Ram”.
When senior Trinamul leader and minister Jyotipriyo Mullick held meetings in Kanchrapara, suspected BJP supporters started chanting “Jai Shri Ram” aggressively and tried to surround the convoy.
Police wielded the baton to disperse the protesters, prompting the BJP workers to block the tracks at Kanchrapara station for about a half-an-hour.
“It was our party’s organisational meeting. As soon as we came out, we saw that BJP workers were shouting. It was nothing but a pre-planned programme of the BJP orchestrated by Subhrangshu. It was uncivilised behaviour,” said Mullick, referring to the son of BJP leader Mukul Roy. Subhrangshu, an MLA, had recently switched to the BJP after being suspended by Trinamul.
Mullick, who is also Trinamul’s North 24-Parganas chief, had gone to Kanchrapara with cabinet colleagues Sujit Bose and Tapas Ray. BJP supporters said they were protesting Mamata’s purported remarks earlier this week in which she had called Subhrangshu “chotto gaddar (junior betrayer)”.
“We tried to prevent those shouting slogans so that they didn’t get to stop the ministers from reaching their destination. Since we were outnumbered initially, the RAF had o be called in,” said an officer of the Barrackpore police commissionerate.
Mullick and the other ministers met in the house of a local Trinamul leader, Alorani Sarkar. “It was a two-hour organisational meeting with senior leaders. We discussed ways to immediately restore our organisation in various pockets and the preparations for Mamata Banerjee’s meeting here on June 14,” said Sarkar.
Trinamul leaders said the meeting was held to restore the party’s organisation in the Barrackpore Lok Sabha area — Arjun Singh is now the BJP’s Barrackpore MP after having quit Trinamul earlier this year — that has become vulnerable to the BJP’s onslaught.
In the past few days, over 200 Trinamul party offices have been allegedly captured by the BJP after Subhrangshu switched to the BJP.
At a Trinamul meeting on Friday, Mamata had instructed the senior leadership to draw up a roadmap to address the weaknesses on a war-footing.
In Bankura, minister Suvendu Adhikari — the newly appointed observer for the district — held a meeting in Saltora on Saturday. He later visited the family of a slain Trinamul leader, Kajal Mandal.
“You should not be disappointed. Our party was not defeated. We got 39 per cent votes in 2014. This time, we got 44 per cent. We are still leading in more than 160 Assembly segments out of 294. We need 148 Assembly seats for government formation here,” Adhikari said.
In Birbhum, district chief Anubrata Mondal summoned leaders of the Suri civic body, where the BJP got a lead by over 10,000 votes, and held a meeting in his office in Bolpur. Mondal also called all gram panchayat members and leaders from areas that gave the BJP leads in the Lok Sabha polls.
