Murmu’s civic reception reflects change in Mamata’s stance on Centre
There is more to the grand civic reception the Bengal government will host in the honour of President Droupadi Murmu during her upcoming visit to Kolkata than just the political propriety.
Murmu will reach Kolkata on March 27 for a two-day visit to West Bengal, her first after becoming the President.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took personal initiative to organise the reception to be held at Netaji Indoor Stadium on the day the President will reach the state, sources in the state secretariat said.
Banerjee had taken the lead to put up a joint opposition candidate for the presidential poll against Murmu last year. Her party Trinamool Congress’s then vice president Yashwant Sinha was the opposition nominee for the country’s highest constitutional post.
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The BJP, however, stumped her by nominating Murmu, a tribal-woman leader, as the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Stumped by NDA
Realising that by opposing Murmu, the TMC could upset the state’s politically significant tribal population, Banerjee even claimed that she would have considered backing the NDA’s nominee as a consensus candidate if the BJP had informed that it would nominate an Adivasi woman for the presidential poll.
The state has around six per cent tribal population. Sixteen assembly seats and two Lok Sabha seats are reserved for the community. Apart from the reserved seats, the community is also a deciding factor in many other seats in Purulia, Bankura, West Midnapore, Birbhum, Jhargram districts and in the state’s northern part.
Murmu comes from Santhal tribe that makes up for most of the state’s tribal population.
The TMC further faced tribal ire last year when one of its senior leaders and ministers, Akhil Giri, made a derogatory off-the-cuff comment on Murmu’s look, necessitating serious course correction.
Political message
By organising the civic reception, Banerjee will like to give an implicit political message to the tribals whose sentiments might have been hurt because of TMC’s opposition to the candidature of the Adivasi woman and Giri’s comment.
This apart, the programme, which will also be attended by Governor C V Ananda Bose, has another subtle message. The TMC government is trying to change its confrontationist approach towards the centre, a far cry from the controversy triggered a couple of years ago when Banerjee allegedly snubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi by skipping a meeting with him on the impact of Cyclone Yaas in the state.
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Unlike in the past, when the TMC was ever ready to take on the central government, it has of late shown a lot of restraint in confronting the Centre beyond certain points.
The TMC, in fact, set the opposition aflutter soon after the presidential elections by abstaining from voting against NDA’s vice-presidential nominee Jagdeep Dhankhar. The decision came as a shocker as the Mamata Banerjee government had an acrimonious relation with Dhankhar during his tenure as governor of the state.
BJP and Modi
Banerjee again created a buzz in the political circles in September last year when she tried to draw a line between the Prime Minister and the BJP.
“Opposition parties are threatened everyday by BJP leaders with arrest by CBI and ED… I don’t believe Prime Minister Narendra Modi is behind this. It is some BJP leaders who are misusing the CBI and ED,” she had told the assembly.
Apart from a resolution passed by the West Bengal assembly last year against the alleged “excesses” of federal agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate, the TMC did not go for any major protests on the issue despite the arrest of many of its party leaders, including Banerjee’s second-in command Partha Chatterjee in cash-for job and cattle smuggling cases. This is again a shift from Banerjee sitting on a dharna in the CBI office to seek the release of her party colleagues arrested in the Narada sting operation case in 2021.
She had also gone for sit-in protest in 2019 when the CBI attempted to question then Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in connection with Saradha ponzi scam.
The party’s reluctance for an all-out fight against the Centre was further evident when it did not join a march by 18 opposition parties demanding a probe into Adani row on Wednesday (March 15).
Soft stance
The party’s proposal that all non-BJP ruled state governments should start investigation against Adani Group in their respective state is another instance of it going soft on the Centre. When most opposition parties are mounting pressure on PM Modi demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the Adani-Hindenburg row, the TMC, by asking the opposition-ruled states to lead the probe, is in a way deflecting the pressure off the Centre.
TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’ Brien and Lok Sabha MP Saugato Roy at a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday said the Adani group might be protected by the Centre but the opposition-ruled state governments should expose it before the people.