Mamata brings in fresh blood, orders major rejig in TMC

Kolkata: Within 48 hours after Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee gave a clarion call to not allow Gujarat to rule over Bengal, she announced the formation of various committees and changed several district presidents on Thursday, thereby giving a clear cut indication that the party will leave no stone unturned to ensure BJP's defeat in the 2021 Assembly elections.

Banerjee announced a seven-member steering committee of the 21-member state coordination committee to oversee the roadmap that will be made for 2021 Assembly elections. These members include Subrata Bakshi (Convenor), Partha Chatterjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Suvendu Adhikari, Kalyan Banerjee, Firhad Hakim and Shanta Chhetri.

Apart from these seven members, the other 14 who will be part of the state coordination committee are Subrata Mukherjee, Sadhan Pande, Aroop Biswas, Goutam Deb, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Arpita Ghosh, Nadimul Haque, Hiten Barman, Mamatabala Thakur, Mriganko Mahato, Vivek Gupta, Debu Tudu, Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Derek O' Brien.

Chhatradhar Mahato, who was the president of People's Committee for Action against Police Atrocities in Jangalmahal and was arrested in connection with the attack on the convoy of former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, later convicted and released on February 1, 2020, has been included in the state committee along with former CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Ritabrata Banerjee.

Subrata Bakshi is the president of the state committee. Some of the prominent members are Amit Mitra, Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, Saugata Roy, Dinesh Trivedi, Sisir Adhikary, Purnendu Bose, Javed Khan, Asima Patra, Abdul Karim Chowdhury, Tapas Roy and Tapan Dasgupta.

Partha Chatterjee will continue as the secretary general of the party while the general secretaries would be Firhad Hakim, Aroop Biswas, Suvendu Adhikari, Silbhadra Dutta and Baisanor Chatterjee among others. Indranil Sen is the Chairman of the cultural committee while Debjit Bose is the Convenor of the cultural committee.

Mahua Moitra, party Lok Sabha MP, has become the new president of Nadia district. All the posts of district Observers have been abolished. Laxmi Ratan Shukla is the new president of Howrah Urban district.

In North Bengal where the TMC did not do well in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Banerjee has changed all the district presidents. The district committees have been made in such a way that there is a combination of old and young guards.

Partha Pratim Ray is the new president of Cooch Behar, replacing Benoy Barman. Similarly, Goutam Das replaced Arpita Ghosh as the president of South Dinajpur while Kanaiyalal Agarwal is the president of the party's North Dinajpur unit.

In Jhargram, Dulal Murmu became the new district president replacing Birbaha Soren Tudu. In Paschim Burdwan, Jitendra Tiwary becomes the district president. In Murshidabad and Malda, Abu Taher Khan and Mausam Noor have been appointed as the district presidents.

The party is yet to decide the president of Kolkata North while Debashis Kumar is the president of the South Kolkata unit.