Following the crushing defeat in the West Bengal Assembly elections and the formation of a new BJP government led by Suvendu Adhikari, the state’s political landscape appears to have completely shifted. TMC chief Mamata Banerjee took to the streets of Kolkata on Tuesday to protest alleged attacks on Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers, the assault on MP Abhishek Banerjee, and the eviction of street vendors.
However, the entire protest was marked by chaos and administrative friction in Kolkata’s Esplanade area. Following strict restrictions imposed by the police administration, Mamata Banerjee was forced to sit on the protest without a formal stage or a microphone. The party’s 60 rebel MLAs maintained their distance from her protest.
The most surprising aspect of this protest was the action taken by the Kolkata Police, which forced Mamata Banerjee, who had been at the helm of power until then, to take to the streets. The TMC had initially planned to stage a grand protest on the historic Rani Rasmoni Road in central Kolkata, but the Kolkata Police flatly refused permission, citing law and order concerns.
Mamata Banerjee, accompanied by her supporters, arrived at the Y-Channel Esplanade and sat down on a mat on the road. When the police denied her permission to build a stage or use a large loudspeaker, she became enraged. Holding a small megaphone, she addressed the crowd. She declared that the BJP had murdered democracy. “We were denied access to a platform and even a microphone to raise the voices of our workers,” she said.
Mamata Banerjee was attempting to establish a larger narrative of post-poll violence against the Bharatiya Janata Party government through this protest, but the internal divisions within her party were fully exposed. Mamata Banerjee was accompanied at the protest by her former lieutenants, Firhad Hakim, Madan Mitra, Derek O’Brien, Kalyan Banerjee, and Dola Sen.
The most significant aspect of this mega-dharna was that most of the new and young MLAs who won the recent elections on TMC tickets stayed away from the entire event. Sixty rebel MLAs who had been absent from the party’s internal meeting were strictly instructed to attend the protest, but they ignored the top leadership’s instructions. This clearly demonstrates that all is not well within the Trinamool Congress.
Security arrangements were completely disrupted during this one-day protest, hosted on Y-Channel. While former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was speaking through a megaphone, the massive crowd of workers created chaos. Banerjee had to interrupt her speech several times due to the uncontrolled sloganeering by the workers.