Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday that the raids by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on the premises linked to I-PAC betrayed the BJP’s desperation to wrest Bengal, but sources in her party said the Centre had actually handed the chief minister a major politico-electoral opportunity, which she would run with.
The chief minister announced that she would lead a protest march between the Jadavpur 8B bus stand and the Hazra crossing at 2pm on Friday.
“Is it the duty of the ED? They are taking all our party documents? Naughty and nasty (Union) home minister (Amit Shah).... The home minister who cannot protect the country and is attempting to take away our party documents. If I raid the BJP party office, what will happen?” asked the Trinamool Congress chairperson outside I-PAC chief Pratik Jain’s Loudon Street residence in the morning.
This was reminiscent of Mamata’s 2019 February showdown that began at the Loudon Street bungalow of the Kolkata Police commissioner when a CBI team visited the then occupant (now DGP) Rajeev Kumar. It triggered the launch of Mamata’s mega “Save the Constitution” dharna at Esplanade.
Outside the I-PAC’s Sector V office later on Thursday, Mamata said: “This is a crime... murder of democracy.”
“I-Pac is an authorised team of Trinamool Congress. They attempted to take away all the documents from the office.... Was it fair for them to do this?” she asked.
“After this, you will be reduced to zero. Mr Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), you should control your home minister,” added the Trinamool chief.
Asked if the candidate list (which she claimed was taken) was ready, Mamata said: “Certain suggestions keep coming in, and we maintain a list. Now they have taken it away. This may take some time to retrieve, but we will definitely get back on track.”
Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee, despite public appearances during the day, was conspicuous in his apparent unwillingness to directly address the matter. I-PAC was brought in by Abhishek in 2019 to help Trinamool devise the election strategy when it was being helmed by Prashant Kishor. There were some tense moments over the years between Mamata and I-PAC, but the agency never fell out of favour with the Diamond Harbour MP.
Multiple seniors in Trinamool said the ED raids on Thursday and the chief minister’s immediate and direct challenge were “unmistakably” going in Mamata’s favour. They said the drama would inevitably cause the proliferation of the repetitive “setting” theory — the widely speculated allegations by the Left and the Congress of a secret understanding between Mamata and the highest leadership of the BJP and the RSS. The Sangh, according to the theory, prefers her as a placeholder in Bengal till there is certainty of a BJP victory in the state.
“If the setting theory is allowed to sink roots in the popular psyche, it helps the Left and the Congress by taking some electoral support away from the BJP. The setting discourse does not hurt Trinamool. She knows it, the BJP’s Bengal boys know it too. Which explains their reactions,” said a senior on the Treasury benches of the Assembly, who failed to find logic in the ED actions that were surely not going to end with coercive measures against Mamata or Abhishek, or even Jain, with a matter of weeks before the notification of the elections.
“The ED seemed disoriented and clueless when it went into the operation, and did not seem to know what hit them when she pounced on them with some of the best cops in her armoury,” he said. “The BJP high-command or the central agencies could not have stolen our candidate lists or poll strategy from a few physical files or hard drives, in this day and age, and they knew that well.”
A Trinamool MP said the “shoddy, unprepared” ED raids in an old case of alleged corruption that Bengal’s masses didn’t purportedly care about were most ill-timed for its “political masters”.
“But one cannot escape the sneaking suspicion that the agency, and the people they report to in Delhi, were aware of this. The only people left in the lurch by this are the occupants of 6 Muralidhar Sen Lane,”
he said.
In public, however, Mamata played her favourite victim card and accused the BJP of trying to play underhand after failing to ensure victory with the special intensive revision (SIR) of the voter list. She devoted a large chunk of her statements to the SIR and its allegedly flawed nature in Bengal.
“They have not given the victims any opportunity to even defend their cases. They have harassed the young generation, the elderly, and even renowned people. Do they think they can capture a state like Bengal in this way?” Mamata asked, referring to the SIR.
The chief minister asked if the BJP was so sure of its defeat in Bengal, why the party wanted to contest in the state. “I suggest they fight in the open, not in this manner. Bengal is a key part of India. If Bengal is disturbed, all the gateway and border states will also be disturbed, but these foolish people do not understand this. They only understand divisive politics,” she said.
