Kolkata: In the shadow of the Saradha Group chit-fund scam, West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee government stepped into its third year in office on Monday, with the chief minister claiming the state has outperformed the national average in key sectors.
Having moved from one controversy to another, often triggered by actions and comments of party leaders and ministers, including the chief minister, it was far from smooth sailing for the Trinamool Congress government till the second-year of the rule.
The Saradha scam, the biggest financial scandal to hit West Bengal has posed the biggest challenge to the Banerjee government, with reports of closeness of many Trinamool leaders with the tainted group emerging over the past few weeks.
Banerjee drew criticism for branding a marginal farmer Shiladitya Chowdhury as a Maoist and jailing him for publicly questioning her about fertilizer prices.
She also drew flak for mimicking Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on a national news channel, publicly telling her own security policemen they deserved to be whipped and threatening to slap some photo-journalists.
There were police firings in Tehatta of Nadia district and Loba in Birbhum district, killing one person, and injuring several.
A police sub-inspector Sub-Inspector Tapas Chowdhury was killed during trouble sparked by a college election in Garden Reach area of west Kolkata.
After TV channels aired life footage of the killing, a Trinamool Congress councillor Mohammed Iqbal was arrested.
Another party councillor Sambhunath Kow was arrested for his involvement in the murder of a party leader at Mathpukur in the city’s eastern fringes.
A leader of Communist Party of India-Marxist students wing SFI (Student Federation of India) Sudipta Gupta died in mysterious circumstances amid allegations that the police had beaten him mercilessly.
The Trinamool Congress students wing faced widespread condemnation for vandalising Presidency University in protest against the SFI’s demonstration in Delhi against Banerjee and state Finance Minister Amit Mitra.(IANS)