Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is on a sticky wicket after several intellectuals and cultural icons expressed a lack of confidence in the government following the RG Kar rape and murder incident.
Published Sep 09, 2024 | 11:36 AM ⚊ Updated Sep 09, 2024 | 3:39 PM
Mamata Banerjee (left) has reportedly requested Jawhar Sircar to reconsider his decision to quit the Rajya Sabha and politics over the "angst and total no-confidence" in the West Bengal government.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee’s plan to bring intellectuals and non-political faces into the state politics — a trend that she started in Bengal’s political landscape after ousting the Left Front in 2011 — received a jolt after former IAS officer Jawhar Sircar announced his decision to resign from the Rajya Sabha on Sunday, 8 September.
Speaking to South First, Sircar said his sudden resignation from TMC and exit from politics is an act of ‘self-immolation’. “This is my way of pushing Mamata Bannerjee to take note of the reality unfolding in West Bengal. The anger against the TMC government over the rape and murder of a doctor in RG Kar hospital is akin to the anger against Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh,” Sircar said.
The bureaucrat-turned-MP is most disappointed with women leaders of TMC for choosing to keep mum. “As CM, Mamata Bannerjee should have met the protestors. The mass movement in West Bengal over the incident is unprecedented. Every day one union or the other stages a protest against the government. TMC has perhaps the highest women representation in elected posts but the women leaders have chosen to ignore the severity of the incident and its aftermath,” he expressed surprise over his colleagues’ response.
”This is a wake-up call for Mamata Banerjee and TMC. If this people’s movement is ignored, there will be a heavy price to pay,” Sircar warned.
Sircar, an intellectual, speaker, and writer, decided to relinquish the Rajya Sabha membership, saying he had never seen “such angst and total no-confidence” in the West Bengal government. His reference was to the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on 9 August.
In a letter to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Sircar criticised the government’s action, mentioning “punitive steps” taken by the current dispensation were “too little and quite late”. He also decided to quit politics as well.
Sircar’s decision to resign from the Rajya Sabha is a likely setback to Mamata’s idea of bringing intellectuals and bhadralok into the Trinamool fold. Many of them have joined the rape-and-murder protest marches and also decided to return awards received from the Bengal government.
Many intellectuals have joined the rape-and-murder protest marches and also decided to return awards received from the Bengal government.
It seems that the ruling party has realised that the returning of awards might bleed the party’s base in the state’s culture world, which has been extending support since the change of guard in the state.
Already eight personalities from the fields of education, theatre, and culture have announced their decisions to return their awards. Noted artist Sanatan Dinda resigned from Rajya Charukala Parishad, Bengal’s art body.
Sensing trouble, education minister Bratya Basu preferred to shift to attack mode. “If such heinous act takes place in other states, will artists from Bengal return national awards,” he asked.
Bengal’s intellectuals and towering cultural personalities had played a key role in building public opinion in the backdrop of the Singur and Nandigram movements, spearheaded by Mamata against the Left Front government, which catapulted TMC to power.
Sircar, a nominated Rajya Sabha MP in 2021, has not been fielded in an electoral battle. His decision to step down will deliver a strong message against the party, senior TMC leaders admitted.
“Sircar is the face of elitist intellectuals. His strong letter criticising the state government will not go down well. The BJP has been eyeing to woo the Bengal’s intellectuals and it also followed Mamata’s footsteps in fielding star candidates in elections held over the past decade,” a ruling party leader said.
In his letter, Sircar, like many others, expressed apprehensions over communal forces capitalising on the RG Kar incident. He urged Mamata to “do something”.
While the Left Front fielded candidates with political backgrounds or connections, Mamata’s unique idea of nominating tall personalities from various fields to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, altered Bengal’s political landscape.
Among TMC’s 42 candidates, six were actors, one footballer, and a singer. None of them had any prior political experience. The electorate sent seven of them to the Lok Sabha.
TMC candidate and actor Moon Moon Sen defeated CPI(M)’s heavyweight candidate and nine-time MP Basudeb Acharya and another actor, Sandhya Roy, wrested Midnapore from the Left Front.
The RG Kar episode and Sircar’s decision to quit have cast a cloud over TMC’s future. His letter strongly criticising the TMC-led government and Mamata has already become viral on social media platforms — the medium through which the RG Kar tragedy attracted both national and international attention.
“Believe me, the present spontaneous outpouring of public anger is against this unchecked overbearing attitude of the favoured few and the corrupt. In all my years, I have not seen such angst and total no-confidence against the government, even when it says something correct or factual,” Sircar said in the letter to Mamata.
“I have suffered patiently for a month since the terrible incident at RG Kar Hospital and was hoping for your direct intervention with the agitating junior doctors, in the old style of Mamata Banerjee. It has not happened and whatever punitive steps that the government has been taking now are too little and quite late,” he added.
Sircar’s reference to a “favoured few” is believed to be aimed at a group of doctors involved in alleged corruption, now under a CBI probe.
Sircar, who joined the IAS in 1975, informed Mamata that he would go to Delhi soon and tender his resignation to the Rajya Sabha chairman.
Terming the spontaneous agitation a non-political one, Sircar urged Mamata to do something to save the state.
“It is my belief that the mainstream of the agitation is non-political and a spontaneous one and it is not correct to take a confrontational stand, by labeling it political. Of course, the opposition parties are trying to fish in troubled waters, but the mass of the youth and the common people who are out agitating on the streets every second day do not encourage them,” he wrote.
“They want no politics: they want justice and punishment. This calls for course correction immediately or else communal force will capture this state….Please do something to save the state,” he urged Mamata.
The former bureaucrat, now in his early 70s, turned vocal after the arrest of former education minister Partha Chatterjee. The former minister was arrested after cash, amounting to more than ₹100 crore, was found in his close aide’s apartment in 2022.
“I was quite shocked to see on TV and print the open evidence of corruption that the former education minister had indulged in. I made a public statement that corruption must be tackled by the party and government, but I was heckled by senior leaders in the party,” he said.
“I did not resign then as I had hoped that you would carry on your public campaign against ‘cut money’ and corruption that you had started a year earlier,” Sircar said in the letter.
The MP was strongly criticised and verbally abused within his party after he had spoken out on public platforms about Chattarjee’s arrest in connection with a scam in Bengal’s education sector.
In his letter, Sircar elaborated on his middle-class life after retirement and compared it with the luxurious life of TMC leaders, which apparently pointed at corruption.
“I have grown up in a middle-class family in Kolkata and in my youth, I have travelled in suffocating public transport, hanging on to the footboard of buses. So, after 41 years in the IAS, I can live without embarrassment in a small middle-class flat, next to a big slum and drive a very ordinary nine-year-old car,” he said before referring to the lives of TMC leaders.
“But I am amazed to see that several elected panchayat and municipal leaders have acquired big properties and move around in expensive vehicles. This hurts not only me, but the people of Bengal,” he pointed out.
Criticising the central regime thriving on the multi-billionaires and dirty crony capitalism, Sircar wrote: “I cannot accept some things like corrupt officers (or doctors) getting prime and top posting. No!”
(Pranab Mondal is a Kolkata-based journalist with 23 years of experience in crime reporting. Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
(South First is now on WhatsApp and Telegram)
