During the campaign for the municipal polls in Tripura a group of Trinamool Congress leaders had assembled at a street corner when a vehicle with a few BJP leaders drove past. The BJP supporters on the vehicle were playing a song at a high volume that had become a major hit during election campaigns in West Bengal.
“Phutbe Ebar Padma Phool… Ei Trinamool arr na (The lotus will bloom this time, Trinamool should not be here anymore)” went the catchy number.
Among the TMC leaders at the street corner was former Union Minister Babul Supriyo.
The song “Ei Trinamool arr na” directed at the TMC was sung by Mr. Supriyo, then a BJP leader, in 2019 before the Lok Sabha polls. It was routinely played at almost every public gathering of the BJP in West Bengal in 2019 and ahead of the 2021 Assembly polls. Not only does the song have a catchy tune, the scathing lyrics target the Trinamool Congress leadership, with lines such as “Didi pa-e Hawai choti, Bhai-ra sob kotipati ([though] Didi wears flip-flops, brothers are all crorepatis).
A feather in his cap when he was with the BJP, the song is turning out to be an embarrassment for the singer-turned- politician after he has switched sides and joined the TMC.
In Tripura, a red-faced Mr. Supriyo insisted that whatever he takes up, he completes it with all sincerity. “The BJP is playing my song…I promise I will come up with a song for Trinamool,” he said.
However, after that incident in November, Mr Supriyo was not seen campaigning much in the civic polls of Tripura and has been missing from the TMC’s campaign for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls.
After he switched sides, the West Bengal BJP leadership had promised to greet Mr. Supriyo with the song whenever he campaigned for the TMC. “What a better way to welcome him than playing his song,” BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh had said.
The former two-time MP had quit the BJP after he was dropped from the Union Council of Ministers in July this year. When he joined the Trinamool Congress a few months later in September he said he was happy that party chairperson Mamata Banerjee had given him a chance in the playing eleven.
But almost three months after joining the party, Mr. Supriyo is still struggling to find his feet in the Trinamool Congress. Keen to expand its support base in the northeast and Goa, the TMC has nominated newly inducted leaders from the Congress like Sushmita Deb and Luizinho Faleiro to the Rajya Sabha.
Mr. Supriyo, however, is still struggling to get the right tune for the Trinamool Congress.