Trinamul MLA Sadhan Pande

His leader chased him away from Bengal. He chases him when he is in Calcutta.

The him being chased here is Ratan Tata and the he doing the chasing is Trinamul Congress leader Sadhan Pande.

The Burtolla MLA — who was suspended by the party for his pro-Nano stance in 2008 — tried his luck twice at Taj Bengal, parking himself in the lobby on Sunday evening when the Tata boss was entering and then again on Monday morning when he was leaving for the Tata Tea AGM. In vain.

“I had gone to the hotel for some personal work,” he told Metro, denying that he was tracking Tata.

But Pande was third time lucky. In a desperate bid, he lay in wait for the convoy at Ratan Tata’s last stop in town en route to the airport — the Tata Medical Centre at Rajarhat.

“Just before the main entrance to the hospital, a middle-aged man in a safari suit lunged at the car and tapped on the right rear window, where R.K. Krishna Kumar (a Tata Sons board member) was sitting next to Ratan Tata,” a police source told Metro. “Krishna Kumar rolled down the window and the man shoved an envelope at him and managed to speak for a few seconds.”

The “man in a safari suit” was Sadhan Pande. And he was no longer coy about admitting his Mission Tata. “I had gone there to suggest to Ratan Tata to start a cancer research institute along with the hospital. They would require 10 acres and as a public representative I can help them acquire the land,” he said.

Did Mamata Banerjee know about his latest tryst with Tata? Silence.

But Trinamul sources were anything but tight-lipped. “His pro-Nano stance led to his suspension. He returned to the party fold with his tail tucked between his legs but now it seems he has not learnt his lesson. Didi will not be pleased,” said a Trinamul MLA.

The Tata Medical Centre site was where Pande, armed with two packets of mishti, had managed to meet Tata in August 2008 — at the height of the Singur agitation — and thank him on behalf of the people of Bengal. “I am glad that such a project is coming up here and that Tata has kept his commitment,” Pande had said then.