Retired bureaucrat and former Rajya Sabha MP from the Trinamool Congress Jawhar Sircar Wednesday cited the Supreme Court verdict on the School Service Commission as the reason behind his decision to quit from the Upper House.
“People ask me why I resigned as MP of Trinamool Congress. Would my conscience allow me to be a part of such rot?” Sircar wrote on his X. “I went with the Trinamool Congress as it is the toughest fighter against communal, fascist BJP. I left because Trinamool’s corruption and authoritarianism were getting too bad.”
Sircar had resigned from the Rajya Sabha last September in the aftermath of the rape and murder of a 31-year old postgraduate trainee at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, expressing his anguish at the repressive steps adopted by the state administration to silence the protests and the mounting corruption charges against Bengal’s ruling party.
Speaking to The Telegraph Online on Thursday afternoon Sircar said the people of Bengal have been caught in the trap of greater and lesser evil.
“My post was an expression of the frustration of a section of the people who feel trapped between the lesser and greater evil. There is a sense of cockiness in the Trinamool. Despite the charges and all the cases, there is no impact, there is no course correction,” said Sircar. “The BJP remains my number one enemy.”
In 2006, Sircar left Kolkata and moved to Delhi where he was the secretary in the Union ministry of culture. In 2021, Mamata Banerjee handpicked him for the Rajya Sabha.
“The Trinamool has taken for granted the voters of Bengal. They know the Bhadrolok will never vote for the BJP. How long can this go on?” asked Sircar.
Having spent his life working with politicians as a bureaucrat and later as a member of Parliament, Sircar said he had never seen a party like the Trinamool.
“People ask me every day why I quit since all parties are made of thieves. I tell them I have not seen another party so thoroughly corrupt as the Trinamool. Here everyone has joined politics to make their fortune. In other parties there are some people who are actually working for the people,” he said.
Some days ago on social media, Sircar shared a photograph of his with Manmohan Singh and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee clicked at Kolkata’s Science City in 2010.
“The last photo I have with both my bosses together, thorough gentlemen, honest — both are now gone,” he wrote.