Secrecy, Congress style
Aware that the two-day Chintan Shibir of the state Congress unit in Krishnanagar will be a stormy affair, party’s leadership made all attempts to make the affair “secret”. Awry of party’s turbulent relations with Trinamool hitting the next day headlines, the leaders asked mediapersons to leave the venue. Even state Congress chief, Pranab Mukherjee, personally requested mediapersons to leave the makeshift auditorium erected on CMS school ground. The police were also told to see that journalists don’t intrude the venue. But what the leaders forgot that the loudspeakers that were placed outside the auditorium remained on during the entire course of the internal meeting. As a result everyone in the half a kilometre radius of the venue could easily hear all the arguments taking place inside the auditorium as leaders shouted and made controversial comments on alliance partner Trinamool. “You can hear it even 500 metres away from the school ground. So why do you want to enter the auditorium?” said a senior Congress leader smiling, when asked about the secrecy.

In sync or not?
A FAUX PAS committed by a senior bureaucrat in the state government during the swearing-in ceremony of the state’s new Information Commissioner Sujit Sarker has made sceptics to say: “The ‘winds of change’ — an allegorical reference to the growing clout of the Trinamool Congress in the Left-dominated Bengal — has started to sweep the minds of bureaucrats too.”
During the swearing-in ceremony, Principal Secretary, Home (Personnel), K Sathiavasan while announcing the name of Sarker, inadvertently uttered Sudip Bandopadhyay — Trinamool MP — leaving everyone, including Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Chief Secretary Ashok Mohan Chakrabarti, DG Bhupinder Singh, amused. It was of course a genuine mistake but sceptics have started saying: “Who knows? Since IAS officers like Sathiavasan, N R Banerjee, Nurul Haque etc are not regarded very friendly with the Marxist government.”

Meet Trinamool’s Nani
DO you know what epithet Kalyan Bandopadhyay, fire-brand Trinamool Congress MP and a lawyer of repute of Calcutta High Court, has earned from his own party colleagues? Bandopadhyay, who has won many cases in the High Court against the state government, is now being called “Trinamool Congress’ Nani Palkiwala” — one of the country’s most famous lawyers. The other day Union Minister Saugata Roy was heard saying, “Hey, here comes our Nani.” Bandopadhyay did not seem to have much objection to that.

Decoding Bengal!
IT seems that the delay in kicking-off the construction of the steel plants of JSW in Shalboni has made the mediapersons so impatient that they insisted Biswadip Gupta, Joint MD and CEO of JSW’s Bengal unit, to say something about starting the project. An intelligent Gupta replied: “You have waited for 32 years to have industry in the state. Please wait for a few more days.” Listening to his answer, everybody started laughing while Gupta gave the perspective behind his comment. “Once I was stuck in a road blockade put up by 10 to 15 youths of a political party. I had to hurry up as I had to attend a very important meeting. I got down from my car and tried to talk to the youths. But they told me that we have waited for 32 years for everything in this state, you just need to wait for 10 minutes and the blockade would be cleared.”

Finding common ground
IN the Lok Sabha last week, the Left and Trinamool Congress members clashed a number of times. On one occasion, however, the House was surprised when Left members thumped the desk to congratulate Trinamool MP Kalyan Banerjee after his speech on electoral reforms because he attacked the media for conducting opinion and exit polls. CPI member Prabodh Panda even offered a thumbs-up sign at his rival to congratulate him.