Lok Sabha Elections 2024: A turncoat takes on a veteran at centre of Trinamool Congress’s ‘Old Guards vs Young Turks’ fight

What is making Sudip Bandopadhyay's journey difficult is the infighting – or, to be precise, the ‘Nabin banam Pravin’ (Old Guards versus Young Turks) conflict – within Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party

Kolkata: The ‘roadshow’ of Sudip Bandopadhyay rolls into the narrow alley with the Trinamool Congress candidate for the Kolkata Uttar Lok Sabha constituency waving to the crowd on both sides from a hoodless vehicle that was decked with the party’s flags. A few men and women appear from nowhere all of a sudden, raising the “go back, go back” slogan, but waving, believe it or not, the flags of the TMC itself. What has irked them is that the local party unit was allegedly kept in the dark about the roadshow that was organised by the ‘outsiders’.

Sudip, 71, who already had five terms as a member of the Lok Sabha, is seeking a sixth term but what is making it difficult for him is the infighting – or, to be precise, the ‘Nabin banam Pravin’ (Old Guards versus Young Turks) conflict – within Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party.

His bête noire within the TMC, Tapas Roy, who has been a legislator for four terms, quit the party just ahead of the parliamentary polls and joined the BJP to contest against him. A local municipal councillor even staged a sit-in demonstration in the early days of campaigning, protesting against slighting by the close aides of Sudip. He was publicly criticised by a young TMC spokesperson for allegedly circulating a campaign pamphlet that only had several pictures of him and Mamata, but not even one of the party supremo’s nephew Abhishek Bandopadhyay, the general secretary and the ‘youth icon’ of the party.

Sudip, however, is unfazed as he has the backing of the TMC supremo herself. “He is very loyal to the party and has been very efficiently leading our party in the Lok Sabha after I left in 2011,” Mamata says, addressing an election rally at Bow Bazar in support of her party’s candidate in Kolkata Uttar. “Don’t worry about what the other people say,” she adds, sending a message to the TMC candidate’s detractors on and off the podium – including senior party leader Kunal Ghosh.

Ghosh, a journalist-turned-politician, is known to be close to Abhishek and was opposed to renominating Sudip as the TMC’s candidate in Kolkata Uttar. Just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, he also posted on X seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation against Sudip.

Sudip had been arrested by the CBI in January 2017 in connection with a probe into a chit-fund scam. He had been granted bail a few months later.

Ghosh also accused Sudip of being pally with the BJP.

The party recently disciplined Ghosh after he showered praise on Sudip’s rival Roy.    

“I don’t know if ‘Sudip Da’ would contest elections again. But please vote for him this time,” Mamata tells the cheering crowd in Bow Bazar with Ghosh sitting on the podium. She also hits out at Roy, albeit without naming him. “He was secretly in touch with the BJP leader for several months. He finally fled and joined the BJP because he got scared after the ED raided his residence”.

Roy, 67, quit the TMC a few weeks after the ED raided his residence earlier this year in connection with a probe into alleged irregularities in recruitment in civic bodies. “She should not think that everyone would be like her. She was in touch with UPA (United Progressive Alliance) when her party was in the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) and vice versa,” Roy counters the TMC supremo’s jibe, as he visits the constituency’s low-lying areas that got waterlogged in the wake of the cyclone Remal.

He also attacks Sudip: “He was not in jail for participating in the freedom movement. The CBI had him for his role in corruption.” He also accuses the five-time MP of not being in touch with the people of the constituency, of not being aware of their problems, and of not doing anything for them.

The Kolkata Uttar not only encompasses several landmarks of the ‘City of Joy’, including Presidency College (now a university), Bethune College, Hare School, College Street, Calcutta Medical College, Esplanade, and the ancestral home of Rabindranath Tagore but it is also a microcosm of India, with migrants from other states of the country living and earning livelihoods. 

Sudip is pinning his hope on better civic amenities and welfare schemes introduced by the TMC government. The TMC, however, alleges that the BJP is partially funding the campaign of the Congress candidate Pradip Bhattacharya, 79, who is also supported by the Left Front, so that he can take away a significant chunk of the votes of the minorities, who constitute about 20 per cent of the total electorate of the constituency, making it difficult for Sudip.  

With Abhishek emerging as the heir apparent of Mamata, the tussle between the ‘Old Guards’ versus ‘Young Turks’ within the TMC has been escalating, forcing the party supremo to relieve all leaders in the higher echelons of the organisation of their offices in February 2022. The move was initially perceived as the one intended to clip the wings of Abhishek, but he was later reinstated as the national general secretary of the party. The clamour within the TMC for the retirement of veterans continued to grow louder. Abhishek, himself, publicly stated that the politicians, like people in all other professions, should retire after reaching a certain age, leaving space for new leaders. His opinion was amplified by Bose and other TMC leaders close to him. Mamata, however, countered it, emphatically stating that the senior leaders must be respected.

Abhishek last year undertook a 3500-km-long “Trinamool er Nabajowar Yatra” crisscrossing the state for 60 days, to blunt the anti-incumbency wave triggered by the allegations of corruption against the party, which has been ruling the state since 2011. The ‘No 2’ of the TMC has also been traveling across the state, campaigning for the party’s candidates contesting for the Lok Sabha seats. But he has so far avoided campaigning, not only for Sudip in Kolkata Uttar but also for other veteran candidates, like Saugata Roy in Dum Dum and Kalyan Banerjee in Serampore.

Mamata, however, has been holding rallies and ‘padayatras’ for the party’s veterans and young candidates alike.

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