Sen and Deb

Calcutta, Sept. 12: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Mamata Banerjee, Partha Chatterjee, Sabyasachi Sen, Subrata Gupta, Gautam Deb….

Question: Which familiar face is missing?

Answer: Nirupam Sen, the industries minister who gets Mamata Banerjee’s goat.

Question: Which new face has come in?

Answer: Gautam Deb, who was by Jyoti Basu’s bedside when Mamata called on the patriarch.

Sen skipped the inconclusive session in the Nandan complex this evening as well as the CPM state secretariat meeting this morning, apparently because he was unwell.

“He could not attend the secretariat meeting because he was unwell. However, the secretariat authorised both the chief minister and the industries minister to take appropriate action to solve the Singur imbroglio,’’ said secretariat member Madan Ghosh.

However, sources within the CPM suggested that a bout of “political illness” might also have prompted Sen to stay away from the meeting.

The minister, who has become the most articulate voice of industrialisation in the state, could have stayed away to ensure that the meeting between Mamata and Bhattacharjee took place without any rancour, the sources said.

Mamata apparently expressed her exasperation with Sen in front of the chief minister and the governor when they met on Sunday evening.

The soft-spoken but passionately pro-industry Sen earned the Trinamul leaders’ wrath as he refused to yield ground during negotiations in the first two days at Raj Bhavan.

Others suggested his absence reflected the differences of opinion within the CPM on addressing the Singur mess. “Why should he go when nobody in the party protested after Partha Chatterjee publicly accused him of blocking the compromise between the government and the Opposition?’’ asked a CPM leader.

A section of the CPM finds Sen “more uncompromising than Buddhada” on Singur.

While secretariat members like Benoy Konar had echoed Sen, Bhattacharjee, state party secretary Biman Bose and other secretariat members like housing minister Deb had sounded more accommodative of the Opposition’s demands.

Deb, known to be close to Basu, had said in an article in the CPM organ on Wednesday: “The chief minister and the industries minister now have to convince the Tatas after Mamata. The Tatas belong to this land and are conversant with the politics in the country. They know Ulfa in Assam and the Maoists in Jharkhand. They have just not descended from the sky. Hope they will appreciate the Mamata problem in Bengal, too.”

Deb, associated with the largely peaceful land acquisition for the Rajarhat New Town project, was the CPM’s key emissary to Mamata when she was on a hunger strike on Singur in Calcutta in 2006. The minister is reported to have played a role in Mamata calling off the fast.

He is also believed to have been instrumental in facilitating Mamata’s visit to Basu’s house, where she broached the plan for relocating the ancillary units.