SARADHA LOOT 

ON April 9, 2013, Ponzi boss Sudipta Sen, the head of chit fund organisation Saradha Group which went bust robbing lakhs of people of their life savings, fled Kolkata. A few days later at a general council meeting of her party, chief minister Mamata Banerjee reportedly said “No one will be spared. I am not on the side of any culprit.” She followed this affirmation with a burst of sarcastic questions, “Kunal chor? Madan chor? Tumpai chor? Mukul chor? Aami chor? Sabai chor? Baki ra shob sadhu! (Is Kunal a thief? Is Madan a thief? Is Tumpai a thief? Is Mukul a thief? Am I a thief? Are all of us thieves? And the rest are saints)!” The people she referred to were either her party MPs or ministers in her government. 

Interestingly, even before the turn of the year, the same Kunal  Ghosh MP was arrested on November 23, 2013, by Mamata’s own Bengal police, which was then investigating the case. The significant question is why--to punish the guilty or execute the crucial cover-up? The question is important, all the more so because on November 23, 2014, Kunal Ghosh speaking outside Bankshall Court after being brought from Presidency Correctional Home, said, "Mamata Banerjee is the biggest beneficiary of the Saradha scam." He added, "She is a coward. She should be made to sit in front of me and questioned".

Ironically, despite bragging much about her transparent way of running the government, Mamata Banerjee could not stand her ground when Abdul Mannan and Bikashranjan Bhattacharya filed a case in the Supreme Court on May 20, 2013, seeking a CBI probe. While the governments of Assam, Tripura, and Odisha readily agreed to a CBI investigation, West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee spent more than 11 crore rupees on lawyers to stall the CBI investigation. Again, the question is: why? Why did she fear an investigation if she was confident that there was nothing to hide? After all, our leader is the epitome of honesty, fairness, transparency and other values!

WE ARE ALL THIEVES!

Then came November 24, 2014, when the shocked people of the state saw a strange procession led by the chief minister. The rally saw many wearing placards with a weird slogan Mamata Banerjee had coined: "We are all thieves, come arrest us". The people wondered what sort of message the Bengal CM was trying to send.     Days before this rally on November 21, 2014, Trinamool party paper, Jago Bangla, editor and TMC Rajya Sabha MP, Srinjay Bose (Tumpai) was arrested. He was arrested by the CBI in the Saradha case. Earlier, a former police officer, Trinamool leader Rajat Kumar Majumder was arrested, accused of embezzling huge sums of money by being one of the bosses of Saradha Company. On November 11, the Trinamool government's transport and sports minister, Madan Mitra was taken into custody. Even today, people do remember the roaring march led by Mamata Banerjee the very next day in support of the accused. The minister had to spend 629 days behind bars, intermittently taking refuge in the government's own SSKM hospital’s Woodburn ward,   but did not lose his ministry. After all, our leader is the epitome of honesty, fairness, transparency and other values!

 Bengal's biggest film producer and distributor, Shrikant Mohta, embezzled 24 crore rupees on the pretext of producing 70 films from scam-tainted Rose Valley Company owner, Gautam Kundu-a splendid case of cheating the cheater! On January 25, 2019, when the CBI tried to arrest the accused, the Kolkata police team almost arrested the CBI officials. Whose interests did the Kolkata police represent?  Under whose command did they act in such a manner? Of course, our leader is the epitome of honesty, fairness, transparency and other values!

WHAT WAS HIDDEN IN RAJEEV'S HOUSE?

February 3, 2019, was the day of a mammoth Left Front rally with red flags fluttering gloriously all over the Brigade Parade Ground, Kolkata. On that very day, a CBI team arrived in the evening outside Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar's residence purportedly to question him in connection with the Saradha chit fund case. Then all hell broke loose. The chief minister was livid when she got to know of the CBI's arrival. She ran helter-skelter to reach Kumar's residence at Loudon Street in central Kolkata and got closeted in a meeting. Immediately after that, she sat down for a dharna at the Metro Channel in Kolkata’s Esplanade area,   to protect the Kolkata police commissioner! Chief minister, police chief, eager crowd, thieves, policemen- all together took to the streets. Of course, our leader is the epitome of honesty, fairness, transparency and other values!

Her nephew's small cottage, the “haven of peace”, is two streets away from her house. The wife of the Bengal chief minister’s nephew was caught at the Kolkata airport allegedly carrying some illegal gold. So, what? Will the CBI enter the house of the chief minister's nephew to interrogate his wife? Absurd! Of course, our leader is the epitome of honesty, fairness, transparency and other values! That's why she rushed to Delhi to bail out the accused.

THE DEFIANT DHARNA AT NIZAM’S PALACE

It was May 17, 2021. By then, a group of political pundits had taken up the position that in their electoral victory, all the thefts, cons and scams of the Trinamool had been 'constitutionalised'. In the meantime, the CM’s once blue-eyed boy ‘Kanan’ (aka Sovan Chatterjee, Kolkata’s former Mayor), her faithful Firhad Hakim (the present Mayor), once her mentor and later a leading member of her cabinet late Subrata Mukherjee, and her earnest devotee Madan Mitra were taken to the CBI office at Nizam Palace in Kolkata as they were charge-sheeted in connection with Narada bribery case! How dare they!  What does it matter if people had seen them on television, taking bribes from a phony company man? Didn’t the election result cleanse them from all sin?    So, our CM sat there for six hours demanding the unconditional release of the accused bribe takers. Of course, our leader is the epitome of honesty, fairness, transparency and other values!

WHERE HAS ALL THAT SHINE GONE?

Why is the same person who is used to making as much hullabaloo as possible about every case of enquiry so quiet now in the case of her minister and party general secretary, Partha Chatterjee accused in the School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment irregularities scam, or that of her trusted lieutenant, Anubrata Mondal arrested in cattle smuggling scandal? What ails her? There used to be tacit understanding in the past, but there were also public outbursts. Such a quiet, glum face has never been seen even after dozens of scandals in the last 12 years! This time she furtively met Amit Shah's close friend Assam chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma and governor, Jagdeep Dhankhar with whom she enjoyed a sweet, sour and yet spicy relationship mired by periodic unsavoury incidents at the Raj Bhavan in Darjeeling. In order to make Dhankhar ensure his win in the post of vice president, she agreed to digest the scorn of the opposition of the whole country! Not surprisingly, this was followed by a 4-day visit to Delhi again marked by a closed-door meeting with the PM.  But the characteristic scream, roar or rumble that usually follows such visits is sadly missing. And people can see who is being sacrificed to save whom. Everything is clear and lies open before them.

BHAIPO(NEPHEW) SINGS A DIFFERENT TUNE 

While the aunt seems to be in a fix, the nephew appears to be in a mood to take a lead over her and is going on sermonizing: 'Stealing is a sin, if you steal, you have to leave Trinamool,   no injustice will be tolerated' –so on and so forth.  The devil quotes scripture, the wise say when it suits his purpose. At present we have two busy sermonizers preaching gospels in Bengal-Kunal Ghosh and the celebrated bhaipo. Everywhere we find them peddling moral lessons. So, the question that comes to mind is: has BJP found its 'Shinde' in Bengal? To reach the aunt one needs to take a circuitous route. Once in a while,   to save the BJP from danger one needs to get in touch with her via Ambani-Adani-Nagpur etc.  It's a lot of trouble.  Every now and then she shall ask for favours and in return, she will scowl, scream and rail with rude clamour. Why will Modi-Shah tolerate such tantrums? Bhaipo, who has ended up embroiled in dozens of corruption scandals, can easily be reduced to the status of puppet in the hands of the ruling dispensation. Is this “top jewel of honesty” now BJP's trump card in Bengal? The new saviour of Trinamool-led mafia gang? In the meanwhile, the megastar ‘mahaguru’ had come to gauge the situation and to entrap offenders from Trinamool, persuading them to change sides. Soon we may see another round of change of loyalties and switchover to BJP. The scamsters after amassing crores under the banner of TMC's 'grass and two flowers' will take shelter in the bed of BJP's ’lotus’. The wide display of these circus shows will increase the coffers of media barons, the thieves shall also continue to rule the roost. But what about Bengal? What will happen to the people of Bengal?

THE FIGHT IS TO CHANGE THE GOVERNMENT, NOT THE CABINET

These thieves are the smelly blood-stained puss pouring out of the burning abscesses of crony corporatism controlled by Adani-Ambani and their like. The owners of this dirty capital have given the responsibility of the upkeep of this to parties like BJP-Trinamool. If these two anti-people forces are not ousted from Bengal, even if our youth sit on the streets for 5000 days, justice will not be achieved. Their character does not change, so the government has to change. The struggle should be led in a way as to change the government. We need to be extra careful as the known culprits are again looking for a chance to change colours and form a government in the name of the BJP. These two parties have an identical approach to corruption. So, both these parties need to be shown the door.