Mamata Banerjee to take training session with students & youth wing members of her party in January end

West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee will hold a training session with her party’s students’ and youth wing members in January end, the first of its kind that has been organised in the recent past.

The workshop cum training session will be held on January 27 and 28 at Netaji Indoor Stadium in Kolkata, where she will herself discuss and “teach” the young leaders about the nitty-gritty of politics and leadership.

Hundreds of students and youth leaders are expected to participate in the training programme cum workshop and are looking forward to learn the dos and don’ts of politics from Didi.

Banerjee has herself been a youth leader and rose to the top through her days of struggle fighting against the Left Front government that remained in power in West Bengal for three and a half decades. She has been a self learner and didn’t have a political guru who helped her reach the top. In fact, in a male-dominated Congress – the party she had been with for decades before she broke away and formed the Trinamool Congress – Banerjee had to struggle hard to find a place for herself.

But her party, the Trinamool Congress, lacks a strong students’ wing and popular young leaders. Apart from her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress has an acute lack of popular youth leaders.

Understanding that this vacuum needs to be filled up, and soon, the party has been increasingly focusing on its youth wings. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been increasing its influences in colleges and universities of the state, and the Trinamool Congress’ students’ wing, the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad needs a major push in order to fight the BJP at that level.

Also, Banerjee has been fighting the BJP-led government’s policies on National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Young women and men across the country have come out and protested on the same issue.

Banerjee and her party want to bridge and blur this gap, so that more young people become part of the Trinamool Congress’ protests against the contentious NRC and CAA. She also wants to expand her reach among the educated youth in the state, where she may not be so popular currently.

Banerjee is on her way to formulating policies and benefits for the young leaders in her party – and give them greater opportunities for their voices to be heard in the coming days.