West Bengal government functions from roadside as CM continues dharna against Delhi

KOLKATA: Bengal witnessed its first roadside cabinet meeting on Monday, with Mamata Banerjee trying to balance the administrative responsibilities of a head of a state with the role of a national opposition leader from a 625-square-foot dais in the heart of the city at Esplanade.

CM Banerjee’s dharna — against the CBI’s decision to send its officers to Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar’s Loudon Street residence on Sunday evening — entered its second day without any sign of when it would end or what it would take to end it. History suggests that she may not be in a hurry; a hunger-strike launched from this very spot 13 years ago — to protest against the acquisition of land in Singur by the Left Front government — went on for 26 days.

This time, though, Banerjee — as head of the Bengal government — has multiple official duties and engagements. So, besides presiding over a cabinet meeting (the state budget was presented in the assembly by finance minister Amit Mitra), Banerjee also distributed gallantry medals to cops and addressed a farmers’ rally, where the audience was at Netaji Indoor Stadium (a couple of kilometres away), over a video call from the podium.


The most important of her Monday’s engagements was the cabinet meeting before the state budget. The Metro Channel Hare Street police outpost adjacent to the stage was converted into a makeshift conference room, where Banerjee joined her cabinet colleagues, including finance minister Mitra, urban development minister Firhad Hakim and education minister Partha Chatterjee, for the mandatory pre-budget meeting at 1.20pm. The formalities were over in 20 minutes and she returned to the dais shortly thereafter.

Before that, however, the chief minister addressed the farmers’ meet (her video call was projected on a large screen at the stadium) and signed a bunch of documents that state chief secretary Malay De brought down from Nabanna .

“This fight is for the farmers. The central government has left farmers all over the country sleepless. Our government has been fighting for the farmers’ rights from a stage at this very place since 2006. It was only after my 26-day demonstration here 13 years ago that farmers woke up to the threat of losing their farmland,” she reminded her audience.

Another important engagement came in the evening, which required her to hand over gallantry medals to distinguished officers of Kolkata Police. It was supposed to be held at Uttirna, a convention centre in Alipore (six km away), but the venue was shifted to a stage hurriedly constructed next to the dharna site on Monday afternoon.

“This was a scheduled government programme. But I cannot leave the stage because of this emergency. But I do not want government work to be hampered,” she said before walking over to the other stage to distribute the medallions. “We have some officers who can be compared to the best in the world,” she said.

The dharna stage itself was hurriedly constructed on Sunday night. Banerjee reached there at 8.15 p.m. on Sunday and sat on a chair with Trinamool leaders on one side and senior police officers, including commissioner of police Rajeev Kumar, on the other even as workers erected the stage.

Party leaders remained by her side past midnight, when she asked some of them to go home and return on Monday morning. She took a nap around 3 a.m. but was up early, taking to walking briskly on the stage and circling around those who sat on the dais and — from time to time — taking the microphone to explain the reasons for her agitation and announcing the names of ministers and other dignitaries when they arrived.