First to be arrested (by Mamata’s own police) was Kunal Ghosh whom Mamata, in one of her many moments of unwisdom, sent to Rajya Sabha and for some time made party spokesperson in Delhi. As his neck-deep involvement in the scam came into the open and he started threatening the supremo with spilling all the beans, he had to be arrested to gag his mouth.

Then came the turn of Srinjay Bose, businessman and newspaper owner, who was also made a Rajya Sabha member. He has recently been released by the court on bail. Immediately after his release he resigned first from the Rajya Sabha and then from the party itself. Another lieutenant of Mamata, Sports and Transport Minister Madan Mitra, was also arrested and is now in judicial custody. He presented himself at the CBI office in Kolkata after trying to avoid the probe body in every way possible and for as long as possible.

Then Mamata’s commander-in-chief and in charge of the party organization, Mukul Roy, a former railway minister and Rajya Sabha member, was summoned by the CBI. He resorted to the same trick of avoiding the CBI as long as possible but ultimately went to the CBI office. He was interrogated for several hours and allowed to go. He looks unfazed and unworried. The political gossip market in Kolkata is abuzz with the rumour that he has struck a secret deal with the CBI and its political masters. On Mamata’s own admission, he did not tell her what the CBI asked him and what he told them. Meanwhile, the BJP is constantly threatening that it will be her turn next.

The people of Bengal are not only disillusioned but feel cheated. They reposed their full faith in her because she had fought hard all the way against the reign of terror unleashed by the CPI-M for three and a half decades. Single handed, she built up the party and faced the goons of the CPI-M. On the morrow of her victory, she assured there would be only a badal or change, but no badla or revenge against her defeated enemy. To be sure, she kept her promise.

But then things started changing and changing fast. Mamata admitted into her party most of the goons and lumpen elements who had taken shelter under the CPI-M during the Left Front rule. Also some lower level CPI-M workers who, skilled in the art of manipulating party organization, elbowed out and marginalized the old and loyal workers of the party, setting off unending group clashes between the old-timers and the newcomers.

By and large, TMC men started extorting money, misusing police and resorting to coercion, from hooliganism to outright thuggery – in fact everything the CPI-M did and was rejected for. Then started the period when the student wing of the TMC would adopt the same methods that the CPI-M did during its heyday. They would beat up teachers and heads of educational institutions and prevent their rivals from filing nominations for union elections. In school after school, college after college, the TMCP would sweep all the seats. Instead of taking them to task and taking strong disciplinary action, Mamata, in every case, defended and protected them. The CPI-M or its student wing, the SFI, was in no position to resist because its organization had virtually collapsed as soon as it lost power.

Mamata was also frequently making off-the-cuff remarks without ascertaining facts, like dismissing the Park Street rape case as a got-up one and calling it a conspiracy. When the senior police officer in charge of the case confirmed that it was indeed a rape case, a furious Mamata summoned the officer to the State Secretariat and gave her a piece of her mind. She was summarily removed. There have been many more such cases of faux pas by her.

The sum total of all these was the lowering of her public image and bringing her party into disrepute. People found no difference between the TMC and the Left. In fact the TMC was copying every bad thing that the CPI-M did – and perhaps more clumsily. She began squandering the immense fund of goodwill she had started with. The exposure of the Saradha scam was the final anti-climax.

There came a qualitative change in the political situation in West Bengal last year when the BJP came to power at the Centre with Modi as prime minister. Many CPI-M and other Left party workers started deserting and joining the BJP. Reason: their parties had failed to protect them in the face of TMC’s terror tactics. Disgruntled TMC workers also left the party and joined the BJP. But the BJP, hoping to capture power in 2016, lacks two things: a party organization to match TMC’s and a chief ministerial face who will be acceptable to the people.

The BJP is making all efforts to capture the base of the Left, the Congress and the Trinamool. Being in power at the centre and with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi having some appeal as a leader even in West Bengal, it has been easier for the BJP leadership to go to the disillusioned electorate who are fed up with both Trinamool and the CPI-M. But the BJP leaders are overestimating their prospects as their organization at the moment is no match to the power of the Trinamool Congress. Apart, despite all her failings in the recent months, Mamata still wields enormous clout among the underprivileged, the minorities and the poor peasants. The Kolkata based big media may be totally against the Mamata Government but that does not necessarily make its voting impact on the rural electorate. That is the harsh reality of the West Bengal politics. (IPA Service).