Sattar Mollah joins Trinamool Congress

Mollah joined the party in presence of Mayor Sovan Chatterjee.The desertion of local, zonal and district committee leaders of CPI(M) and their subsequent joining to Trinamool Congress is significant.

 It may be mentioned that party’s mouthpiece Ganashakti had carried a news in its edition on Thursday that stated that two zonal committee members in Cooch Behar and West Midnapore and four local committee members had been expelled from the party for helping TMC in the Assembly elections.

South 24 Parganas, once a stronghold of CPI(M) has bagged only two seats in 2016 Assembly election. In the 1990s, the South 24 Parganas unit was very strong with Samir Putatunda as the secretary.

 The other leaders were Abdur Rezzak Mollah (now TMC minister for food processing and horticulture), Kanti Ganguly, Sujan Chakraborty, Shamik Lahiri, Sunil Chakraborty, Amal Mazumdar and Badal Kar. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya used to contest from Jadavpur Assembly seats where the party base was very strong.

But over the years, the party had lost contacts with people. Rezzak Mollah joined TMC and Kanti Ganguly lost to Debashree Roy of Trinamool Congress in two consecutive terms.

Sattar Mollah said the people did not take the alliance with Congress in good spirit. “Most of the villagers were puzzled to see us and Congress workers together. Leaders of alliance failed to clear their confusion and this was reflected in the election result.”

He said the projects taken up by Mamata Banerjee to uplift the condition of poor people along with infrastructure building had attracted him. 

Political analysts said there would be massive erosion of CPI(M) in the next few months with many rank and file joining TMC and BJP. There will be an erosion after the Politburo and state committee members who are meeting on Sunday comes out with a statement condemning the alliance with Congress. 

The Central Committee has already disapproved the tie up and has asked the PB to rectify it.