Many perceive the ongoing tiff as an ego battle between Prime Minister Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee: the latter being at the receiving end. The ‘transfer row’ has added fuel to the fire
The battle-lines were drawn much earlier but the war has just begun. The contenders: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the Centre, actually Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Many perceive this as an ego battle between Prime Minister Modi and Banerjee: the latter being at the receiving end.
In one sense this is true because the current face-off is of the Centre’s making rather it being the other way around. It relates to the state’s then Chief Secretary’s absence at the meeting with Prime Minister Modi. Dubbed as the “transfer row”, this could have, ordinarily, passed off as another case of a state versus Centre conflict. But because it is the state of West Bengal and Mamata Banerjee, it has wider ramifications.
Many have put it to vengeance politics: the BJP hell bent on teaching a lesson to the feisty Chief Minister, following its humiliating defeat at the hands of Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress or the TMC, as it is popularly known.That the Modi led dispensation will not let Banerjee rule in peace is a given. As things pan out, it is quite clear that they will continue to create problems and instead of dousing fires, they will ignite them.
Hell bent on converting the state into a trouble factory, the BJP is going around like a wounded tigress: waiting to strike back. And if an opportunity does not come up then it will go ahead and create one. This is what seems to have happened in the latest Mamata versus Modi episode in what is an ongoing saga between a lone-fighter, Mamata Banerjee versus the big boys in the BJP. The inference, ofcourse, is clear even though the pawn in this grand game of chess happens to be the then state Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay. He was needlessly targeted but Banerjee stood like a rock against the Centre’s nefarious designs. It is no rocket science to understand that the Centre is getting even with Banerjee and doing what it takes to create roadblocks in governance. But a fighter that she is, Banerjee is not the one to buckle under pressure.
The current crisis has its genesis in Cyclone Yaas which ravaged the eastern coast of India and played havoc in the states of West Bengal and Odisha inflicting large scale damage. It also kicked up a political storm.Prime Minister Modi undertook an aerial survey of the two states to take stock of the damage caused by the cyclone. Mamata Banerjee was scheduled to attend a review meeting with the Prime Minister but decided to give it a miss.
