My love for Mamata Banerjee will remain throughout my life. As long as Mamata Banerjee is alive, I will be with her.
Suvenduda is very dear
to me.
I cannot say anything for sure at this moment about what will happen in my political life in the future.
Had these been lines from the script of superstar Dev’s next film, it could well have qualified as a taut political thriller. In real life, three-term Trinamool parliamentarian Dev’s confounding comments at chief minister Suvendu Adhikari’s administrative meeting in Kolaghat on Tuesday might well appear to many as fence-sitting.
A day after purportedly spending considerable time with Suvendu in two strategy huddles of Trinamool MPs looking to break away from the party, including a session at the residence of Union minister Bhupender Yadav, Projapati actor Dev landed at the BJP-run Bengal government’s administrative review meeting chaired by the chief minister.
Asked by reporters after the meeting about his involvement in the Delhi developments and his presence at Tuesday’s event, Dev said: “My love for Mamata Banerjee will remain throughout my life. As long as Mamata Banerjee is alive, I will be with her.... I can never say that she did not listen to me. Rather, she always acted on the demands I made.”
“I am not going to the new Trinamool,” Dev added.
On Suvendu, he said: “When he was in Trinamool, we used to travel around north Bengal in the same helicopter. Just as Didi fought and became the chief minister, Suvenduda’s story is also similar.”
Holding forth on why he was present at the residences of Yadav, a Bengal BJP minder for the Assembly polls, and rebel Trinamool MP Satabdi Roy on Monday and at the meeting chaired by the chief minister on Tuesday, Dev said: “If I went to Delhi yesterday, and if I attended the administrative meeting of the chief minister today, it was as an elected MP of Trinamool and the people of Ghatal.”
Dev did not specifically confirm his presence at the homes of Yadav and Satabdi, where rebel Trinamool MPs are believed to have charted out their breakaway from the party in Suvendu’s presence. However, if indeed he was in attendance, it was unclear what duties of an “elected MP” he fulfilled there.
“There may be political differences, but none can deny the fact that Suvendu Adhikari is the democratically elected chief minister of this state, we all have to accept this,” Dev said.
Asked if he had spoken to Mamata against the backdrop of 15 of the party’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs purportedly severing ties with Trinamool, Dev said: “No, not after yesterday’s developments. I was busy shooting last night.”
“The common people, the voters of Ghatal who trusted me and voted for me... they should not think under any circumstances that they voted for the wrong person. Whether I go to Delhi or to Nabanna, wherever I set foot, I do so to secure the just rights and fulfil the development demands of the people of Ghatal,” he said.
A key leader of Trinamool’s rebel bloc in Calcutta offered an explanation for the mixed signals from Dev. “He is just being extra polite, extra nice. No need to take him that seriously,” he said.
Satabdi, who hosted the “tea party” at her Delhi bungalow for the rebels, said the bloc had no association with Trinamool, and that she had invited Suvendu because she wanted to speak to him.
“We have gladly joined the NDA. There was no pressure..., no fear, no favour. My image is clean. There is no association, none whatsoever with Trinamool,” the four-term Birbhum MP said.
“Why did she (Mamata) never listen to those of us who tried to warn her about the issues damaging us to the core, such as institutionalised corruption?” Satabdi asked. “I left because I was not heard... and I want to work for the people.”
From New Delhi, the response from the camp loyal to Mamata was swift and vicious.
Sreerampur MP Kalyan Banerjee tore into the rebels during a news conference alongside Bardhaman-Durgapur MP Kirti Azad, branding them “double-crossers, traitors and fair-weathered friends” who had grown “overweight by feasting on 15 years of power”.
“Their leader has changed; his name is Narendra Modi,” Kalyan said. “The film stars are all foreign stars. They think because the people run after them, the same thing will happen in Parliament,” he added.