The Trinamool Congress top leadership today overhauled the party leaders’ role in North 24 Parganas district, significantly a day after a huge turmoil and political violence in the Bhatpara region that led to two deaths.
Mamata Banerjee has reportedly assigned five lawmakers to take charge of the grassroots level politics in five Lok Sabha seats of the district – Dum Dum, Barasat, Bongaon, Basirhat and Barrackpore. Trinamool Congress’ Jyotipriya Mullick, who had so far been on overall charge of the party’s work in the district, will now have much less power, said party insiders.
The five seats would be supervised by five lawmakers – Tapas Roy has been charged with Dum Dum seat, Rathin Ghosh in charge of Barasat, Gobinda Das in charge of Bongaon, Sujit Basu in charge of Basirhat and Nirmal Ghosh in charge of Barrackpore.
All five seats had been won by Trinamool Congress in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, but the party lost two crucial seats this time – the Barrackpore and Bongaon seats – to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Bhatpara – under the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat – has been on the boil from the time Trinamool Congress’ lawmaker from the area Arjun Singh joined the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha polls on being denied a party ticket. He was later fielded by the BJP from Barrackpore and he went on to win it.
The Bongaon seat was won by Santanu Thakur of the BJP, which had earlier been won by Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Bala Thakur.
The three other seats from North 24 Parganas have been retained by the Trinamool Congress – Dum Dum has been won by veteran Saugata Roy, Barasat by Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Basirhat by Nusrat Jahan.
But with a landslide victory of the BJP nationally and the party’s stunning win in Bengal with 18 seats (from two seats in 2014), there are political clashes all over the state. North 24 Parganas has especially been politically sensitive since the election results were declared.
Putting lawmakers in charge of Lok Sabha areas has not been a norm for political parties. However, Trinamool Congress insiders feel that this will help the party look at the grassroots politics closely and the top leadership will get more feedback on what’s happening on the ground.
