| Friday , January 16 , 2015 |
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150116/jsp/frontpage/story_8721.jsp#.VLiOutKUeSq
| Friday , January 16 , 2015 |
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150116/jsp/frontpage/story_8722.jsp#.VLiOcNKUeSo
Mukul on Mission Delhi |
| Our Bureau |
| Jan. 15: Mukul Roy today landed in New Delhi to pursue the avowed cause of Bengal bypolls but ended up issuing a belated disclaimer meant to contest suggestions that he had landed Mamata Banerjee in a soup on the Saradha scandal. Roy's response came on a day Trinamul leader Partha Chatterjee warned of consequences if his colleague was arrested. Roy said he did not say two days ago in the capital that he met Saradha boss Sudipta Sen in north Bengal. Reports that he said so had assumed significance in the light of earlier allegations that Sen had met Mamata in a guesthouse at Dello in Kalimpong in March 2012. Confirmation of such a meeting will punch a gaping hole in Mamata's claim that she had come to know of Saradha only in April 2013 after it went bust. It was not clear why it took two days and a reported dressing down from the chief minister for him to issue the disclaimer. Looking pale, Roy said today in Delhi in reply to a question from reporters on the north Bengal meeting: "Never said...." But some wiggle room was left open as he declined to go into specifics and said: "Media do not have the authority to ask such questions." Roy, the all-India general secretary of Trinamul, said he was in Delhi to meet the Election Commission in connection with the bypolls to a Lok Sabha seat and an Assembly seat in Bengal. But by the time he landed in Delhi, events had overtaken him in Bengal because of the defection of a minister and Trinamul was forced to announce the candidate for the Bongaon Lok Sabha seat. Asked about the agenda of the meeting with the Election Commission, Roy said: "I will tell you after the meeting." Unwittingly or otherwise, Roy also raised the Trinamul stakes in the bypolls. "How important this election is you don't understand. Every seat is costly. This election is very important for Bengal and the country," he said. Two theories were doing the rounds in Trinamul on Mukul's visit to Delhi, instead of a visit to the CBI office as originally scheduled. One, he was in the capital to find lawyers and explore ways to tackle the Saradha case. Two, he wanted to stay away from Mamata. Roy was accompanied in the capital by Bengal law minister Chandrima Bhattacharya and his lawyer. Sources said some marquee names in the legal profession were consulted but they wanted payment in cheque - a telling comment on the way people outside Bengal are approaching the issue against the backdrop of the Saradha scandal. A legal challenge against the CBI will be unusual as the agency has not proceeded against Roy so far. All it has asked him to do is to turn up for questioning. In Calcutta, a rally by Trinamul's labour wing to protest canards did not attract more than 500 people. Addressing the rally, minister Chatterjee said: "People of Bengal will give a befitting reply and hit the streets if Mukul is arrested." The CBI, which has given Roy seven days to appear before it for questioning, has so far not said anything about arresting him. "It is surprising that Parthada spoke about arrest. It is quite clear that the leadership is jittery," a Trinamul leader said. |
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150116/jsp/frontpage/story_8721.jsp#.VLiOutKUeSq
| Friday , January 16 , 2015 |
OH NO!- Minister quit blow to CM |
| Devadeep Purohit |
 Manjul Krishna Thakur (centre) arrives at the state BJP headquarters in central Calcutta with son Subrata (left) on Thursday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya Manjul Krishna Thakur, the minister of state for refugee relief and rehabilitation, is a face of the Matua community that wields considerable influence in North 24-Parganas' Bongaon where the Lok Sabha bypoll is scheduled for February 13. Soon after Manjul Krishna turned up at the BJP office, the party declared that another minister would be crossing over soon. The Trinamul Congress tried to control the damage by announcing in the evening the candidature of Mamatabala Devi, Manjul Krishna's sister-in-law, as its nominee for the Bongaon bypoll. The bypoll has been necessitated by the demise of Kapil Krishna Thakur, the Trinamul MP from Bongaon, in October. Kapil Krishna was the elder brother of Manjul Krishna and husband of Mamatabala. The BJP is expected to field Manjul Krishna's son Subrata from Bongaon, making it an aunt-versus-nephew contest that can divide the votebank. In the May 2014 polls, the BJP candidate had come third, polling 2.44 lakh votes against winner Kapil Krishna's 5.51 lakh votes. "The Trinamul government has failed to do anything for the Matua community and that's why I am resigning from Trinamul and joining the BJP," Manjul Krishna told a news conference. Manjul Krishna is the Saha-Sanghadipati of the Matua Mahasangha, a socio-religious sect of disadvantaged Hindus. The Mahasangha has been influencing electoral outcomes in Bengal for some time. Mainstream political parties have been wooing the community - downtrodden Namasudras who crossed over to India as refugees after Partition. With the community's godmother Binapani Devi - revered as Boroma by her followers - blessing Mamata since 2008, Trinamul has reaped dividends in successive elections in the two 24-Parganas, Nadia and parts of north Bengal. Earlier, the community had sided with the Left. Against this backdrop, today's development is significant as it marked a vertical split in the Matua Mahasangha. "It seems there is strife among the leaders of the community as they want access to political power," said Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, historian and the author of Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal. According to him, today's developments bring back memories of an earlier division in 1946 when a joint movement of the Scheduled Castes and the Matua community suffered a jolt. The Mahasangha dates back to the mid-1800s. Harichand Thakur set it up at Orakandi in Gopalganj in the Faridpur province of present-day Bangladesh as part of a socio-religious movement preaching love, tolerance, gender equality and non-discrimination. Harichand's son Guruchand played a key role in spreading education by setting up schools. As the movement revolved around social deliverance, it came to be associated with the downtrodden and Harichand's grandson P.R. Thakur got other disadvantaged sections of the society under its fold. "In the pre-Independence period, they maintained a distance from the mainstream nationalist movement.... But it all changed when P.R. Thakur joined hands with the Congress in 1946, which resulted in cracks among the combine of downtrodden people," said Bandyopadhyay, professor of Asian History and director of the New Zealand India Research Institute in Wellington. Following P.R. Thakur's association with the Congress, Jogendranath Mondal of the Bengal Scheduled Caste Federation had made common cause with the Muslim League in its demand for Pakistan, hoping that the Scheduled Castes would benefit from it. In 1963, P.R. Thakur resigned from the Congress and it took him till 1986 to revive the Matua Mahasangha. Thakurnagar in North 24-Parganas became the headquarters of the Namasudra refugees from Bangladesh. The Namasudras were also settled in Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Manjul Krishna today claimed that along with him, 1.5 crore to 2 crore Matuas would switch their loyalties to the BJP. But Santosh Rana, a CPI leader who has worked extensively among the community, said: "The 2001 census suggests that around 22 per cent of the population in Bengal are Scheduled Castes and out of them 16 per cent belong to the Matua community. This means the number in 2001 would have been around 40 lakh to 45 lakh." Other than lack of education and employment opportunities, the biggest problem facing the Matua community is the 2003 Citizenship Amendment Act, initiated by the earlier NDA government. The amendment had categorised people crossing over from Bangladesh after 1971 as infiltrators. While leaders like Manjul Krishna have been claiming that the amended act is coming in the way of Indian citizenship for the Namasudras, some government officials said the fear was unfounded as getting citizenship was hardly a problem both in the Left and the Trinamul regimes. "The act has become a political issue. The Trinamul government had promised the community that it would fight for the repeal of the amendment but it did not. Now, the BJP is making the same promise by trying to convince the leaders that they would make a distinction between low-caste Hindus and Muslims crossing over from Bangladesh," said a professor of political science in a city college. According to him, the BJP is also trying to appeal to the Hindu element of Namasudras, who mostly migrated from Bangladesh to escape religious persecution. "This is a new dimension in Bengal politics as the caste identity that had given them bargaining power is being replaced with a religious identity. Whether the BJP delivers on its promise remains to be seen," said the professor. |
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