mamata-t Pushed to wall, Mamata Banerjee takes over the reins of TMC

Kolkata : Her party in disarray and with the morale of cadres at an all-time low following the CBI crackdown in the Saradha scam, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee Saturday “took over the reins of  the organisation” and asked party leaders to prepare a list of those in the Opposition alleged to have been associated with any chit fund firms.

Defending senior colleagues Madan Mitra and MP Srinjoy Bose, both now in jail, Mamata was quoted as telling a closed-door TMC core commitee meeting at her residence that “Madan and Srinjoy Bose were innocent. The CBI is intentionally targeting senior TMC leaders… A dirty political conspiracy is being hatched to weaken the party”.

Emerging from the meeting that lasted for a little over an hour, a leader, requesting anonymity, said Mamata told the meeting that from now on she would herself look after the party organisation. Party general secretary Mukul Roy had been looking after TMC’s organisational affairs since it came to power in 2011.

“Didi said that from now on, she will focus more on the functioning of the organisation,” the leader said.

Mukul Roy missing

New Delhi: In yet another sign of the internal realignments in the Trinamool Congress, as the core committee and senior leadership of the party met at party chief Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat home in Kolkata on Saturday, general secretary and Rajya Sabha leader Mukul Roy remained in Delhi. His absence from the meeting is the latest in a series of indications that his primacy in the party, where he was once the number two, is on the wane. When contacted, Roy said, “I am in Delhi on a political assignment. There is nothing secret about it. Everybody knows I am here. There is no scope to read anything else into it.”