The Mamata Banerjee administration on Wednesday sought to address some of the perceived issues that had triggered the electoral backlash against the Trinamul Congress in urban and rural Bengal in the Lok Sabha polls.

One, the commissioner of Calcutta police issued a strong statement telling his force not to go about their work “casually” as they had done on Tuesday when “a lady was heckled by some helmetless miscreants”.

In a message posted on an official WhatsApp group of Calcutta police, Anuj Sharma warned of “exceptionally strong disciplinary action” against defaulting officers. The commissioner underlined that the action would not be limited to transfers.

Complaints that police have either been selective in taking action or have avoided tough measures when needed, probably because they were unsure how the political leadership would react, have been growing especially in urban centres for the past few years.

The commissioner was compelled to issue the statement after an app cab that model Ushoshi Sengupta was travelling in early on Tuesday was stopped near the Exide crossing — less than 50 metres from Maidan police station — by bikers who assaulted the driver and harassed Sengupta.

Officers at two police stations initially cited jurisdiction issues to avoid taking action. Seven youths were later arrested and are in custody.

A Trinamul flag on the door of a booth committee president’s house in Birbhum’s Illambazar. Villagers had hung the flag demanding refund of cuts. (Amarnath Dutta)

Elsewhere in Bengal, too, the administration stirred within hours of chief minister Mamata Banerjee telling a meeting of Trinamul councillors that taking cuts for clearing benefits of welfare schemes would not be tolerated.

A former Trinamul village pradhan in Malda district was arrested on Tuesday night on the charge of embezzlement of public funds.

People’s pent-up anger against the practice of extortion also burst into the open on Wednesday when 100-odd villagers in a Trinamul-run gram panchayat in Birbhum surrounded the homes of two functionaries and demanded a refund of the cuts they had taken. In Nadia, a small decorator filed a police complaint against a councillor for taking a cut to release funds under a government welfare scheme.

Mamata had told the councillors’ meeting that any cuts taken would have to be returned. The chief minister had cautioned her party against extortion in the past too, but the warning lost steam after a while.