THE Trinamool Congress party (TMC) that lost the legislative elections after a 15-year rule last month is getting bogged down under the weight of its own sins. Though its leaders are accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of indulging in vendetta politics, Chief Minister Mr. Suvendu Adhikari has insisted -- with proof -- that the TMC is suffering from the fissures in its own ranks with its own members working at cross-purposes. The Chief Minister’s assertion gets proved by the fact that the TMC’s rank and file are engaged in an internal battle of attrition that has seen many elected representatives remaining absent in the party’s official meetings. Some of them have even complained to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly that their signatures were forged by some of their own party colleagues. The writing on the wall, thus, is getting gaudier every passing day.

 

eanwhile, Mr. Suvendu Adhikari proceeded with the process of Cabinet expansion taking his own time because other pressing matters kept occupying his time and attention -- such as handing over of land along the Bangladesh border to the Border Security Force (BSF) for fencing purposes, setting up holding camps for Bangladeshi people living illegally in India, toning up the law and order machinery beyond political bias etc. The allocation of portfolios to Ministers will also follow, but full evidence is available on the ground that the Adhikari Government has swung into action. One big issue the Adhikari Government has to tackle is of the angry mobs expressing their ire openly against the TMC leaders at different places in the State of West Bengal. The West Bengal Police have been given strict instructions to treat each incident, assault, etc on anybody -- including TMC leaders -- as a law-and-order problem.

 

That the cops are following those instructions to the hilt came to fore after the mob attack on TMC leader Mr. Abhishek Banerjee. Though he has described the attack as part of State-sponsored terrorism, the common people know that the attack was an affair stage-managed by the TMC to earn some public sympathy. Public sympathy, however, does not seem to be coming for the TMC since the common people know for sure that during its 15-year rule, the Mamata-party had heaped upon the State deliberate acts of political vendetta -- with the help of goon gangs sponsored and protected by the TMC Government. As a result, the common people get irked the moment they see any TMC leader anywhere and start shouting slogans or even attacking him/her. The TMC, thus, is getting the taste of its own medicine but cannot complain. Because of the no-nonsense stance taken by the State and the Central Governments, thousands of illegal migrants are now thronging the border outposts with the purpose of somehow escaping to Bangladesh to avoid any strict penal action by the Indian authorities.

 

They accuse the TMC Government of having misled them for decades and landed them in deep trouble. It is obvious that the TMC has left those hapless people to their own fate. All this has also led to a massive decline in whatever public support the TMC could still claim to have in West Bengal. The party is now facing the problem of multiple splits in its ranks in the coming times. Internally, many TMC leaders and workers are beginning to point fingers at senior TMC functionaries such as Mr. Abhishek Banerjee for the ills the party has been suffering from. Some of them have also chosen to quit the party -- possibly wondering if they could enter the BJP somehow so that they could escape many a problem later on. The Trinamool Congress party, thus, is sinking under its own weight. This process will get hastened in due time when various official agencies launch their detailed investigations into scams that the TMC Government had sponsored over time. The only grief is that all this should have begun years earlier.