Mamata cries foul as CBI tightens noose in Saradha scam

Ever since he was arrested in July, Ghosh has been shouting from the rooftops that Mamata Banerjee has been the biggest “beneficiary” of the Saradha scam. In November, Ghosh is alleged to have attempted suicide, but he survived with a timely trip to the hospital.

With events turning against her, Mamata Banerjee has declared war on the BJP. Soon after Mitra’s arrest today (12 December), the fiery and mercurial chief minister claimed that Mitra’s arrest was decided even before Amit Shah came to Kolkata for a public rally last month, which she did her utmost to prevent.

Today, she appeared clearly rattled as she railed: “This is an illegal and unconstitutional arrest. Who is CBI? What is their jurisdiction? There are so many other cases about which they're sitting quietly. Why hasn't any Left leader been arrested for any scam?”

While a nonchalant Amit Shah said he had nothing to do with the arrest as the CBI was doing its job independently, it is clear that Mamata is fighting on three fronts simultaneously: with the BJP at the Centre, and with the Left and the Congress in Bengal.

Having thrown the Congress unceremoniously out of the West Bengal alliance, and with the Left spurning her offer to fight the BJP together, Mamata is back to fighting her battles all alone for now – though this may change if the BJP is seen to be gaining an upper hand in the state. Right now, Trinamool workers seem to regularly clash with both BJP and Congress in Bengal.

The three big pressure points for Mamata are the Burdwan blast of October, which is being investigated by the National Investigating Agency, the Saradha scam (by the CBI), and Amit Shah’s efforts to grow the BJP in Bengal by attacking the Trinamool and linking it to both Saradha and Burdwan.

Matters escalated on 30 November, when Shah told a large rally in Kolkata that he was there to evict her from power. In response to Mamata’s haughty poser (“Who is Amit Shah?”), he replied: “I am Amit Shah, a BJP worker. I have come to Bengal to uproot the TMC.”

As noted earlier, the two issues Shah used to pound the Trinamool in Kolkata were the Burdwan blast and the Saradha scam. Shah accused Mamata Banerjee of "shielding the Saradha scamsters and harbouring terrorists". He said: “Bengal needs a government which is patriotic, which doesn’t save the culprits of the Burdwan blast, which does not indulge in corruption,” The Indian Express reported Shah as saying at the rally.

The words “terror” and “patriotism” in the BJP’s lexicon are code for “Islamic terror”, and this time the focus of attention is the fundamentalist Jamait-e-Islami Bangladesh (JIB), which is alleged to have been planning terror attacks in that country from bases in West Bengal. Mamata Banerjee’s party is seen to be linked to the JIB, which is alleged to have obtained some funding through the Saradha Ponzi scheme.

So, the dotted line link Shah sought to draw was clear: Saradha scam-black-money-Bangladeshi Muslim-migrants-terrorists-Trinamool.

As if to prove the link, a day before Shah’s rally, the Jamait-e-Islami-e-Hind in Kolkata staged a massive protest in a show of muscle. As The Times of India reported it, “Kolkata was ambushed by a Jamait…rally on Saturday afternoon… At least 11 policemen — including three IPS officers — were injured in brick-batting and 13 police vehicles damaged. Journalists were attacked for ‘intruding on the space meant for rallyists’ — which was Red Road, the city's VIP thoroughfare.” President Pranab Mukherjee had to take a detour due to the Jamait’s forcible occupation of the space.

The message is clear, since the rally could not have been staged without Trinamool’s wink-and-a-nod. What Banerjee’s party is saying is this: she will use the Jamait and clerics to counter the BJP. In Trinamool’s case, the fight for “secularism” is also a dog whistle to egg Muslim bodies to rally to her support. The Imam of the Tipu Sultan Mosque in Kolkata has been batting for Didi for quite some time now.

But in Bengal’s countryside, not all Muslims are rallying to Mamata’s call as local alignments are based on who can give them protection. With the Left licking its wounds, and with the Congress out of power at the centre, many former Left workers, including some Muslims, have gravitated towards the BJP for protection.

The fight is likely to get bitter as Mamata fights for her political survival ahead of state assembly elections in 2016 and the central agencies (NIA and CBI) go after Trinamool members involved in the Saradha and Burdwan cases.

The fight may get nastier in Bengal. The Bengal Tigress is up against Modi’s proxy lion, Amit Shah.

The writer is editor-in-chief, digital and publishing, Network18 Group